Cost of homes in Cork city regeneration project soars after delays

The cost projected by Cork City Council to build 371 northside homes has ballooned by almost 42% to €155m, while two terraced houses in the project cost more than €1m in total.

The Cork City Northwest Quarter Regeneration (CNWQR) is a huge multi-annual, phased regeneration project which began in the Knocknaheeny and Hollyhill area more than a decade ago. 

The CNWQR masterplan, adopted by the council in November 2011, involves the demolition of 450 houses and the design and construction of more than 600 new homes.

According to figures supplied by the Department of Housing to Thomas Gould, Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central, 14 projects are currently listed as proposed or completed under CNWQR, and four are described as complete.

Those projects cover 371 units and had an original projected spend of €109,600,564.

Superseded

That has now been superseded by the current projected spend of €155,153,776, representing an increase of almost 42%.

Of those, the 29 houses in Phase 1b in Knocknaheeny, which were completed in late 2017, were originally costed at €5,315,971, and now have a current projected spend of €7,468,126.

The 47 homes in Knocknaheeny Phase 2a, completed at the end of 2019, were originally costed at €10,216,000 and are now projected to cost €12,595,3245.

Two terraced houses, on Foyle Ave and Ardmore Ave, completed in late 2023, were initially costed at €488,733, and are now projected to cost a total of €1,055,601, or €527,800 each, an increase on the original costing of 116%.

Included as completed in the second quarter of 2023 is a single-unit development listed as ‘Ard na Rí, Pouladfuf [sic]’. It is initially costed at €486,129, and is listed as finally costing precisely that amount.

Cork City Council did not respond when asked whether this referred to a property in Pouladuff on the southside of the city, and if so, why a single-unit development would cost almost half a million euro, and why a southside development might be included in a northside regeneration scheme.

The four projects listed as complete account for 79 of the overall 371 units.

Cumulatively

Taken cumulatively, those 79 houses were initially projected to cost €16,506,830. They are now projected to cost a total of €20,242,042, representing an increase of 22.6%.

Across the 14 projects, the total spent to date is €40,863,058, or 37% of the original projected spend. That figure represents 26% of the revised projected current spend.

Mr Gould said the soaring costs were a result of constant delays caused by government not releasing funding in a timely fashion.

“Those delays have resulted in huge increases in the cost of delivering these houses,” he said.

“If this project had been properly managed and resourced by central government from day one, these houses might have been built on time and on budget, instead of what we have now, which is more and more delays.

“The people of Knocknaheeny have already been waiting too long, and they deserve better.”

Complex

Last year, Cork City council resolved what was described as “a complex contractual dispute” with contractors working on the 24 houses in the Phase 2c project, paying them €2.5m, and reissued the tender for the project, costed at an estimated €5m.

Works eventually began this summer under a new contractor, and some of the works carried on Phase 2C are currently being demolished.

The phase, now renamed Croppy Boy Phase 1, is listed as having been originally costed at €6,994,139, and is now projected to cost €10,718,217.

Cork City Council was asked for comment.