Off license granted to new Kildare motorway station

IT looks like the residents of Naas will be able to fill up in more ways than one at the new AppleGreen facility on the site of the former Cemex factory.

Applegreen’s parent company Petrogas Ltd was granted permission to change some of the retail area into a small off-licence recently.

The permission from Kildare County Council was granted only last week after applying only six weeks previously, but this is because it was only for a change of use of 8.5sqm of previously granted retail space.

The overall €17m plan for the site was to build a motorway services and distribution warehouse on the 1.49Ha (3.67a), to include Ireland’s largest EV hub, with 36 spaces.

However, this has been held up and delayed by a number of objections over the last year and a half, now all cleared, and work finally began in February this year.

The new distribution centre will be the lion’s share of this development, covering 9,300sqm, while the new 760sqm filling station attached will contain the usual retail, three food outlets, including one drive-thru café in a separate 256 sqm building.

Separately, Taco Bell, a Mexican food chain, are also set to open at the site, its first branch in Kildare.

All this on a site that has been empty since 2007, derelict since a fire gutted most of it in 2012, and where the parent company first applied to Kildare County Council to re-develop in 2015.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme