Re: Re: well what about the developments popping up in the shannonside ?

Urban renewal at what price?

The Richmond Court Apartments 🙁 (1998) with it’s window views to Mount Kenneth Place, Dock Road and to a lesser extent Windmill Lane/Street have a decent enough quality to it’s façade.

However the inner views of this development onto a two storey car park must be a very depressing sight indeed for the people living there! (see attachments below) Worse still in my opinion are the apartments at the very rear facing towards Henry Street. I wonder do they get to see much day light at all due to the nearness of the office buildings on the Henry Street side? Did the developers (Lochside Properties Galway who went into liquidation in 2001) ever contemplate that people would desire to live there long term, especially after when the tax-goodies expire? Had the city council a lack of self belief at the time that the urban renewal schemes for the dock road area would not be successful and therefore gave these developers a free hand because of it’s sheer large scale?

Remarkably enough a similar project across the road at Steamboat Quay 🙂 (1997), where a mixed development of commercial units, apartments and town houses over multi-storey car park were built. The landscaped roof garden, courtyards and balconies in the Steamboat Quay make it a very desirable place to live.
Here a few images from those courtyards

If the Richmond Court were an office development then one could easier overlook the present courtyard mess and one could hope that block ownership would remain in the hands of a handful of investors. Which in turn could facilitate an eventual redevelopment. Alas as jimg rightly points out in the case of apartments (see thread An apartment block is forever), once they are sold to many individual buyers, it makes it practically impossible to correct such mistakes from the original development.

Image # 1: Richmond Court Apartments and the planned Hotel site.
Image # 2: Another perspective (1) Richmond Court Apartments (2) Steamboat Quay Development.
Image # 3: Advertisement from the SB-Post with a few trees pencilled in. :rolleyes: http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2004/06/13/story213668849.asp