Re: Re: One Berkley court -132m Tower

I was reading snipets about it in the newspapers today. It is funny, even in today’s harsh economic circumstances, developing this site doesn’t sound too crazy. You can almost visualise the project getting partially completely, or at least ‘under way’ by the time we experience the next upturn. Bearing in mind that future upturn will be a very muted affair compared to previous experience. I know there are all of the issues in the forefront of peoples’ minds these days – are these guys solvent, how are they still operating and so forth. But when I think about it, Sean Dunne made sure to outbid everyone else for this land – not because he wanted to build on it and take advantage of the Celtic Tiger – he is much too experienced a developer to think he could tackle all the planning issues, and design/construction matters that quickly – What I have realised is that Sean Dunne bought this land to have something with which to occupy himself during the recession.

Now here is the thing your see. None of these developers had factored in ‘The Perfect Storm’ of recession circumstances. They all knew they were at the crest of a wave and facing down into a very large trough – but no one expected the entire financial system across the globe to become a model only fit for garbage, which has to be flung away now. You see, if the situation had not become so dire (Dire-land) none of the skeletons would have been exposed. The ordinary Irish man in the street who doesn’t know (A) What an architect is (B) what a property developer is, or (C) The size of loans associated with both those types of individuals – the ordinary man in the street has got a basic beginner’s lesson in this arrangement, this summer, especially on foot of the Zoe developments court case. But one can imagine a situation, in which the global financial system had struggled on in it’s old guise at least a while longer, and we never would have got a front seat to the train wreck we are now witnesses to.

Brian O’ Hanlon