Re: Re: Fair Play to Starbucks

This thread started off well, but went a bit off in the last page or so …… would be good to get back to the crucial city-centre issue of the splendid but wasting asset of Foster Place.

In the end the Starbucks effect pondered at the start of the thread was fairly negligible and Foster Place pretty much continued on in a horrible state of wastefulness – dominated by taxis, fairly lifeless and prone to anti-social behaviour.

As mentioned earlier, the 2004 Temple Bar Framework Plan resurrected the idea of opening it through to the streets behind, and it would be a good idea to get some life and movement through it because at the moment its main use – apart from taxis and parked cars – is a homeless shelter and a public toilet. The underneath of the House of Commons portico stinks of piss …. in fact the whole place does.

If you can ignore the stench for a minute it’s nice to stand at the end and admire the architecture …. that is until the peace is shattered by a taxi accelerating up to the end, turning around and going off again.

And its fabric has suffered at the hands of Dublin City Council. (As previously featured in the paving thread: ) Superb quality coursing and bonding to the antique stone paving (left), then suddenly – Bleurrgh! – everything is cut up , bastardised and smeared with cement at the triumphal-arch entrance to the former BoI arts centre (right).

DCC’s Roads Maintenance Dept.’s practice of cement strap pointing looks even more ridiculous on these great circular granite tree protectors than it does on paving (left). Don’t ask what all the cement built up around the bottom is for – it looks graceful anyway! One of the golden granite tree protectors has been replaced in a thin nasty white reconstituted granite version (right).

Yeah, Foster Place provides a nice quiet environment for them to get stuck into the historic street furniture; a few weeks damage and destruction at the expense of the taxpayer, and no pesky passers-by to see and report their shocking work.

Is the rumour true that Trinity College now own all the buildings on the west side? What are they doing with them? They haven’t brought any life to the place – aside from leasing the corner building to Starbucks. Would it not be better for different property owners to have an interest here?

Foster Place screams ‘I NEED A PLAN!’, because at the moment it’s going nowhere.