Planning sought for 198-bed student accommodation in Letterkenny

Planning permission is being sought for purpose-built student accommodation for nearly 200 people at the rear of the old Agricultural Credit Corporation (ACC) Bank in Letterkenny. 

The plans, proposed for the site in Upper Main Street, are for two conjoined blocks, each with direct access from a proposed pedestrian link between Justice Walsh car park and Main Street, Letterkenny. The link would incorporate a landscaped “communal art exhibition space” as well as public parklet seating areas. 

Proposed student accommodation would total 198 bedspaces. Provision includes six one-bed studio apartments, two four-bed apartments, five five-bed apartments, four six-bed apartments, nine seven-bed apartments, and nine eight-bed apartments.

The development would also include the provision of facility management accommodation, plant rooms, and bin storage facilities, as well as the provision of a surface water attenuation system and connection to public services at Rosemount. 

READ NEXT: Calling all photographers for Letterkenny & District Christmas Annual

Previous proposals for the site were put forward in 2008 and 2013, both of which included the demolition of the existing building and a development containing six retail units and 11 office units.

Applicants CR Renaissance Properties Ltd submitted a 117-page planning report detailing their proposals. They highlighted an article from 2022, detailing how at the ATU Donegal campus, “accommodation available to students had dropped by 63% at a time when student numbers at the college were increasing” and the “human cost of the lack of student accommodation, with some students having to commute daily from as far away as Dublin.”

The report also stated that “the site is within easy walking distances of the ATU complexes both at Port Road and Letterkenny University Hospital.”

Built in the early 20th century and altered in the 1930s, the old ACC Bank building was used by the Munster and Leinster Bank, and was in use as a branch of Allied Irish Banks until 1981.