The site at Ashtown, Roundwood is 1.64 hectares in size and comprises the existing Roundwood Caravan and Camping Park, which needs investment to update its facilities and to respond to the contemporary demands of Irish and international tourists. Plans submitted to Wicklow County Council seek to transform the caravan and camping park into a five-star offering that would be frequented by Irish tourists and visitors from Italy, Spain and France.<\/p>\n
The proposals are accompanied by a landscape plan that will retain all existing boundary trees serving the site and add a significant volume of new trees to the site alongside other planting.<\/p>\n
The plans will involve the demolition of an existing dwelling\/reception, toilet block and the TV recreation room and store building. The indoor residents\u2019 only wellness centre will include a swimming pool, sauna, steam room, changing rooms and boiler room and a cinema single storey building and a two-storey dormer reception building with a snack bar and seating at the ground floor and staff accommodation on the first-floor.<\/p>\n
There are also plans for a multi-purpose games court and a children\u2019s playground, as well as detached, eco-friendly tourist accommodation, including five three-bed lodges with first-floor balconies, six two-bed treehouses raised above the ground, seven semi-detached lodge buildings, each containing two three-bed two storey units (14 units total), and a three-storey lodge building containing 30 two-bed units.<\/p>\n
BPS Planning and Development Consultants, acting on behalf of the applicant Summitpeak Land Holdings Ltd, state in the planning application that Roundwood Caravan and Camping Park, in its current format, is not a viable tourism facility.<\/p>\n
Sold in 2022, the park\u2019s present format does not align with the \u201cdemands of national and international tourists most of whom do not travel with tents and touring caravans\u201d.<\/p>\n
The planning application report states: \u201cAs with Italian, Spanish, and French sites, individuals, groups and families want all the benefits of staying in a campsite type environment but want to arrive to \u2018ready to go\u2019 self-catering, fixed units, or to stay in almost hotel-type accommodation. The existing facility is not large enough to offer tent or touring vehicle tourism accommodation. This works at Hidden Valley Holiday Park in Rathdrum where other accommodation options and paying facilities (Christmas Island, Splash Valley, etc.) serve to subsidise the low revenue stream nature of that type of accommodation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Ireland, Center Parcs has now set the standard for offering tourist facilities alongside accommodation, though it does so in a rural setting. The current proposals seek to offer this type of model of excellent recreational facilities and amenities alongside high quality accommodation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In evaluating the existing park, the project team noted that the existing dwelling\/reception\/shop to the north of the site entrance off the R755 is poorly sited and detracts from what should be a high quality, welcoming and safe set-down area for vehicles driving to the existing facility and the existing buildings within the site which are of poor quality and have not aged well.<\/p>\n
A decision on the planning application is due by March 1,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The site at Ashtown, Roundwood is 1.64 hectares in size and comprises the existing Roundwood Caravan and Camping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,4657],"class_list":["post-238430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-myles-buchanan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}