New Media Campus For Greystones

Field of schemes

aysus, after the fishermen were finally allowed back into Greystones harbour this afternoon comes some more good news for the town.

A company calling itself Greystones Media Campus Limited has just posted a site notice at that great big field on Mill Road, just before the Shoreline roundabout on the way out of town.

And, after many-a-year of jumping up and down by local councillors over this unused IDA land, it looks like it’s finally going to be put to some very good use. This near-50 acre site will house a development that could lead to approximately 300 full-time jobs and up to 1,200 jobs in the film, media and broadcasting sectors. There would be a further 580 jobs created during the construction phase.

Those behind the development include the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Capwell (a Sisk Group company) and Conor Harrington, an independent TV and film producer.

The site notice states that Greystones Media Campus Limited are applying for a 10-year planning permission for a film media campus, explaining…

The development will consist of 73.511sqm of film studio media campus floor space, made up of 15 buildings of varying height and gross internal floor area, with a maximum height of 17.5m and maximum individual gross internal floor area of 8882m2. The buildings will include film studio sound stages, production facilities, workshops and ancillary accomodation on a site of 18.53 hectares, and all associated ancillary structures.

Bada-Boom! Bada-BING CROSBY!

Naturally, the whole town is excited and delighted, with Jennifer Whitmore TD and Cllr Jodie Neary swiftly sending out a press release that basically says, “Hurrah!”, and Tom Fortune yelling, “Feck, YEAH!” at passers-by.

You can check out the details on the Wicklow Planning website right about here,  plus site notice and artist images here. Decision date is August 25th.

For now, it’s clear that within the next five years, we’re all going to be taking Hollywood – or, at the very least, YouTube – by storm. It is our destiny…

Cover pic by Albert O’Donnell