The concept is to create an attractive, lively, safe, secure, and identifiable urban precinct, which will link the existing Town Centre with the new peripheral development to the West.

The concept layout provides for welcoming boulevard and avenue routes across the site, with a series of inviting civic spaces.  Buildings will address each of the main routes with retail/community uses at street level to form lively edges to the streets.

The main retail centre is envisaged as a curved glazed street linking the principal routes on the site.  This street is set over two levels on this sloping site to achieve, effectively, two “ground floor level“ streets to allow accessibility from all sides of the site.  Service areas are screened and are concentrated to the rear or located underground away from the public areas.

Community services/retail facilities independent of the main retail centre are located on the external perimeter organised to address a crescent shaped road which runs through the site, and together with the civic spaces they provide activity and interest onto the adjoining streets.

This lively network of interconnecting street and civic spaces together with varied building forms and the mix of retail, community services, leisure and recreation, commercial and residential uses will create an attractive urban quarter for Balbriggan.

A series of urban civic spaces in the form of entrance plazas, landscaped boulevards, avenues and crescents will m with a strong sense of place and identity.  The external landscaping scheme will reflect Balbriggan’s nautical links and provide for a seamless connection between the new urban quarter and Balbriggan’s existing town centre.  High quality finishes including stone and glass will be used on the buildings facing the major civic spaces to reflect the position of these places in the hierarchy of the development and to give identity to the spaces.  The masterplan envisages generally buildings of 3 to 4 storeys along the street edges as well as allowing for landmark buildings and focal points to create a varied townscape.

The strategy for the site is of a more dense urban quality to the local low-density suburban residential development reflecting the town development centre use for the site.

Site Area   80,000m²
Masterplan 63,000m²
Phase 1      22,000m²

The Millfield Centre, Balbriggan
Parkway Partnership