Refer to report attached
The purpose of this submission is to re-instate the commercial/town centre zoning on our clients’ site to the east of Douglas Court Shopping Centre.
Douglas is an important district centre for shopping, employment and leisure in the South Environs of the City and should be the primary focus location for employment and economic activity in the forthcoming CDP. The CDP also needs to promote the mixed-use development and regeneration of infill/brownfield sites within Douglas.
The draft CDP proposal to reduce the area of the town centre for Douglas runs against the strategic objectives for the area which recognises that:
• Douglas contains the highest provision of retail and service facilities in the South Environs;
• Douglas is an important employment and retail district;
• The Cork Metropolitan Joint Retail Strategy identified Douglas as a
District Centre;
• The Douglas Land Use and Transportation Study envisaged Douglas continuing to develop as a mixed-use centre extending its range of comparison shopping;
• Future employment and economic activity in the
Douglas/Rochestown area should be centred on Douglas Village.
In the Joint Retail Strategy for Metropolitan Cork, Douglas is identified as a District Centre which needs to expand and improve in relation to convenience and comparison retail.
In the 2017 LAP our clients site formed and integral part of the ‘Town Centre” zoning in Douglas as it was considered as a logical and sequential extension to the existing town centre area and had the capacity to provide mixed-use development such as offices, retail (including urban format retail warehousing in a mixed-use building), retail services and some residential.
The redevelopment of the site can create linked pedestrian and cycle routes which will provide safe permeability and connectivity and which shall follow the preferred desire lines to the existing Douglas village from the commercial/residential areas to the east.
From a land use and transportation perspective it does not make sense to rezone our clients lands from Town Centre use to ZO 16 Public Open Space where it is an objective to “protect, retain and provide for passive and active recreational uses, open space, green networks, natural areas and amenity facilities.”
Our clients lands is the only location where the existing town centre at Douglas can expand in to. Given the level of transport and infrastructural investment earmarked for Douglas over the next 2 years or so, it makes no sense that the only major site to allow the expansion of the town centre be rezoned for open space use and we would strongly urge the City Council to reconsider the proposed open space zoning on our clients site.