New owner for landmark site in Limerick city

A LANDMARK city site which has lain largely idle since the Celtic Tiger era is under new ownership, the Limerick Leader/Limerick Live can reveal.

Local development firm Kirkland Investments has acquired the former Parkway Valley/Horizon Mall site at Dublin Road, and plans for its future are currently being scoped out.

The company is controlled by Rudi Butler, son of the former prominent city developer Robert Butler.

It means the huge patch of land is back under local control for the first time in a generation, in a move described as “reassuring” by metropolitan leader, Cllr Olivia O’Sullivan.

While it’s unclear what the new owners have planned for the site, sources have indicated a development plan will be forthcoming in the coming months.

The Parkway Valley/Horizon Mall site has lain largely idle since 2008 following the economic meltdown.

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Its then owner Liam Carroll had proposed to make it home to a €100m development, featuring a cinema, shopping centre and ice-rink. These plans never saw the light of day, and in 2015, Belfast-based developer Suneil Sharma bought the land, and unveiled plans for another shopping centre, which was to be named Horizon Mall.

This development would have paved the way for Limerick’s first Marks & Spencer store. But, again, this failed to materialise, with strategies promoting city centre retail as opposed to suburban shops preventing this.

Last year, the saga took another twist after An Bord Pleanala rejected another proposal for a €60m overhaul.

Singaporean investment group Novelty Icav, the then owner, had planned to develop a housing development comprising of 122 duplex units and 123 apartments, a filling station, four office blocks and a community building. The firm had demolished the ageing structures on the site on the order of the local authority.

While it remains to be seen what Kirkland Investments plans are, Cllr O’Sullivan has welcomed the new owners, saying: “It’s very reassuring that it’s in local ownership, and they’d be very familiar with the history of the site, and how much people were anticipating it previously – and how disappointed we are with it as an eyesore.”