Apartments on Cork’s former Vita Cortex site given go-ahead

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork City Council has granted planning permission for 170 residential units on the long-vacant site of a former factory near Musgrave Park on the city’s southside that was once the scene of a famous workers’ sit-in.

The development on the 1.2-hectare site of the former Vita Cortex factory between the Kinsale Road and Pearse Road will consist of 158 apartments and 12 townhouse apartments in four blocks, the tallest of which will be nine storeys. Also included in the project are four retail units, a creche and a café.

The factory producing foam for the furniture and packaging industries hit the headlines in 2011-12 when the company went bust and refused to pay statutory redundancy. In response, former employees staged a 20-week sit-in until they received their redundancy payments. Along the way they received the support of the Cork senior hurling team and former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson among others.

The site has been vacant since then and was placed on Cork City Council’s Derelict Sites register in 2017. The empty building was damaged in a fire in 2022.

In its application for planning permission, developer BML Duffy Property Group Limited said the new development would “provide much needed, high-quality housing and a new sustainable community within the well-established community of Ballyphehane.”

The development will include almost 1,000 square metres of retail space, 82 car parking spaces, 514 bicycle spaces, and a new public pedestrian route across the site.

At the opposite end of Musgrave Park at the junction of the Kinsale Road and Tramore Road, another former industrial site has also got the go-ahead for residential development.

The Creamfields scheme, a 15-storey tower and other buildings on the former CMP Dairy site, will provide 606 homes, of which 381 will be cost rental units and 225 will be social units.