Plan for apartment block on historic site opposed

An Bord Pleanála has been asked to overturn planning permission for a seven-storey apartment block overlooking Lough Atalia.

Last year, Patrick Ryan sought permission to develop a site at the rear of the listed building, Forster Street House, to create a six-storey building (plus penthouse level).

The sloping site adjacent to the Galmont Hotel looks out over Lough Atalia and will have access for residents from Lough Atalia Road.

However, City Council planners sought a series of photomontages to be produced to show the apartment block would not adversely affect the listed building. They also raised concerns that the windows of upper-level apartment would result in overlooking.

City Heritage Officer, Dr Jim Higgins, described the proposal as “totally inappropriate” and stated that it should not exceed four floors in height because of the visual impact on the Lough Atalia Road area.

According to an Architectural Heritage Impact Assessment submitted with the planning application, Forster Street House was designed and built by William Forster and was the birthplace in 1850 of Charles Ffrench Blake-Forster (High Sheriff of Galway), whose father was Captain Francis Blake-Forster of the Connaught Rangers and his mother was Mary Josephine Comerford, the daughter of Henry Comerford, the successful Galway merchant.

The property was left to the Magdalen Sisters and let to Richard John Kinkead, Professor of Obstetrics at University College Galway; one of his sons, Richard Crofton Kinkead was a captain with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Great War in 1914, where he was killed.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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