Site on Cork city's ‘Millionaires’ Row’ with planning permission for 48 homes hits the market

A prime development site on Cork city’s ‘Millionaires’ Row’ with planning permission for 48 homes has been launched to market with a €4m guide price.

The 1.5a plot on the city end of Blackrock Rd near Ashton Park is adjacent to the former Society of African Missions (SMA) house ‘Feltrim’, a period property on three acres that sold at the end of 2024 for €6m to businessman Seward Lynch, formerly of Cork Plastics.

Mr Lynch has an expanding Cork property portfolio/development pipeline and is behind the renovation of historic Drumcora House, a protected Georgian villa and onetime Dunlop employees social club, where luxury apartments will shortly come to market. 

A planning application has so far not been lodged for the redevelopment of the Feltrim lands, although it’s understood the preference is for detached, high-end homes.

The latest €4m market arrival on Blackrock Rd, in a highly-prized part of the city, is being sold by Wicklow-based Dwellings Development Blackrock Road Ltd, whose directors are listed as Jonathan O’Connor and Alan McClearn.

The company has delivered housing schemes in several parts of the country, including at Garrán Ferney in Carrigaline and Port na Rinne in Ringaskiddy.

Having acquired the Blackrock Rd site off-market for a rumoured €3m-€3.5m (circa €2m per acre), the company subsequently sought permission to develop the land in July 2023 and cleared the final planning hurdle on appeal in January last year, paving the way for the construction of 44 mews apartments, spread over one five-storey and one six-storey block, as well as four three-storey, four-bed mews houses.

The land in question was previously associated with Nos 1 and 2 Ashton Place, a pair of semi-derelict three-storey semi-ds with side annexes, which sold in January to two separate buyers, with extensive renovation work now underway to reinstate them as two private dwellings. 

The historic Ashton Avenue runs on the western edge, linking to the development site, south of Ashton Place and bounded on the west and south by Ashton Park.

Cohalan Downing are handling the sale and agent Suzanne Tyrrell described the site as “an absolute cracker”.

Currently, due to the financial challenges of apartment building, most of the larger-scale apartments under construction in Cork city are the result of partnerships between developers and the Land Development Agency.