Abbey Theatre is unlikely to be redeveloped at its present location

They should put it beside the new conference centre, create a landmark location. A purpose built, architecturally magnificent building that would have the possibility of using its space on a commercial basis as an overflow for the conference centre. means i wouldn’t have to pay as much to see an overrated production of whichever ocasey/synge/friel tripe is currently playing in rotation.

My OPW sources say they have excluded two of the three shortlisted sites (Colaiste Mhuire and docklands) and are concentrating on Hawkins House. They need to buy some properties in the vicinity in order to extend the footprint, and are sussing that out. Neighbouring landowners are, as we speak, adding noughts to the value of their buildings…..

So its either Colaiste Mhuire or Hawkins House according to the Irish Times today.

I’d prefer Hawkins House but I fear the vacant and decaying school has the edge. Will the Theatre be enough of a magnet to invigorate that entire corner of Parnell Square?
I mean, where on earth would one go for a pint after the show?

Anyone know what are the plans for the development of the Rotunda hospital?

Full article:

The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O’Donoghue, is to ask the Cabinet to approve a new Dublin site for the Abbey Theatre within a matter of weeks.

The Minister is currently studying two sites, Hawkins House – the home of the Department of Health which was once the site of the Theatre Royal – and Coláiste Mhuire, a former school, on Parnell Square.

A third site at Infirmary Road has been ruled out because it is perceived to be too far from the the city centre. Another possibility, the former Carlton Cinema site in O’Connell Street, has been dropped because of a legal dispute over ownership.

A spokesman for Mr O’Donoghue insisted last night that no decision on the two final sites had yet been made, but the Minister was particularly keen to resolve the issue before Christmas, allowing the decision on the future of the Abbey to be taken in its centenary year.

The spokesman said appraisal of the two sites was still being carried out by the Office of Public Works which was looking at the “commercial sensitivities” of the Coláiste Mhuire site. The spokesman explained that commercial sensitivities was a reference to the fact that “not all of the site at Parnell Square is in public ownership”. But he added that whichever site emerged from the process is to be brought to Cabinet by Mr O’Donoghue “within weeks”.

While the Coláiste Mhuire site has the advantage of retaining the Abbey Theatre within the north inner-city – in the constituency of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern – the five publicly owned Georgian houses on the site are listed for preservation in the Dublin City Development Plan. To move the Abbey successfully to the site would represent an architectural challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

Coláiste Mhuire has the advantage of being on Parnell Square where the Gate Theatre, the Ambassador Cinema, the Dublin Writers’ Museum, and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery are already housed. The National Wax Museum is around the corner in Granby Row. The establishment of the Abbey Theatre on the square would be a major boost for Dublin City Council’s hopes to expand the cultural range of facilities in the north city.

Against this, Hawkins House has regularly featured in various lists of Dublin’s worst buildings. The Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Ms Harney, remarked on taking up office there recently that half the windows wouldn’t open while the other half wouldn’t close. Its city centre location and association with the Theatre Royal are seen as positive elements.

The Government initially decided to redevelop the Abbey on its existing site and turned down the offer of a new site in the docklands. However, the existing site is not large enough and acquiring additional properties would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.

Yesterday’s Sunday Times said that Colaiste Mhuire had been chosen.

Sunday Times – November 14, 2004
Abbey gets Parnell Sq school site
John Burns and Siobhan Maguire
A FORMER Christian Brothers college on Parnell Square in Dublin is set to be unveiled as the new home of the Abbey theatre.
Colaiste Mhuire, one of the city’s best-known Irish language schools, was abandoned last year because of its dilapidated state and has since been handed over to the government as part of the child abuse redress scheme.
The Office of Public Works is understood to be buying up an adjoining building to make the site big enough for a new national theatre. A major international architectural competition will be organised to decide who designs it.
John O’Donoghue, the arts minister, is aiming to secure cabinet agreement on a new site for the Abbey before the end of its centenary year, which expires on December 28. Its current premises is inadequate, and it is too expensive to rebuild the theatre on site.
Colaiste Mhuire has been chosen from a shortlist of three city-centre locations, which included Hawkins House, a hideous office block near Trinity College. All three sites were in public ownership.
One of the factors that swayed it for Parnell Square is the number of cultural institutions in the area. The National Wax Museum, the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Irish Writers’ Centre are all neighbours, while the Garden of Remembrance is across the road and the Gate and the Ambassador theatres are at the opposite corner of Parnell Square.
The facade of the five Georgian buildings is listed, and planners expect that the new grand entrance to the theatre will be on Granby Row, beside the wax museum. There is already a 1960s theatre on the site.
A planning official said: “There is no design as yet, so there is no entrance or configuration for the building. They have a site which they own, and it has the capacity to take the Abbey, so they are simply saying ‘Let’s have this as the preferred site’. That’s not to say they won’t run into planning or practical difficulties — it isn’t going to be easy.
“Dublin city council has serious ambitions to upgrade Parnell Square and clearly a building of the stature of the national theatre would contribute greatly to that ambition.”
The interiors of the five Georgian buildings are listed, so knocking down internal walls or removing ceilings will not be allowed, setting a huge challenge for the architects. The new national theatre will need two auditoriums, a rehearsal space, a restaurant/bar, an education facility and an archive.
“The floor space is there, and an auditorium; it fits,” said the official. “Putting a national theatre there is not impossible, it can be done.”
The saga of the Abbey theatre’s new home has been tortuous. The current building suffers from serious defects, such as having no link between the Abbey stage and the Peacock, the experimental theatre in the basement. There are also acoustic problems.
In 2002, the cabinet decided to redevelop the Abbey on its present site, and turned down the offer of a space in Dublin’s docklands. The Abbey’s board had favoured a move down-river, and out of Bertie Ahern’s constituency.
An expert group later concluded that the existing site was not big enough to solve the theatre’s accommodation problems. Adjacent properties needed to be bought in order to allow the theatre to stay there.
A study by the OPW concluded that persuading 20 neighbouring property owners to sell to the state would take too long and be too expensive. Rebuilding the Abbey theatre on its current site would have cost €50m, O’Donoghue said recently.
Earlier this year his officials selected the Carlton cinema site on O’Connell Street as the best new location. Dublin city council was compulsorily purchasing the site, and the department hoped a court challenge from the owners would be speedily resolved. But judgment is still pending, and O’Donoghue’s officials decided to look at other options.
A further attraction of the Colaiste Mhuire site is that it is in the electoral constituency of Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, who has made it clear he wants the national theatre to remain in Dublin’s north inner city.
One of the oldest Irish language schools in the country, Colaiste Mhuire is the alma mater of Brian Farrell, the broadcaster, and Alan Dukes, the former Fine Gael leader. The buildings were taken over by the Christian Brothers in the 1930s.
The new Abbey theatre will probably be built as a public- private partnership (PPP), although O’Donoghue recently indicated a measure of frustration with such projects. He described PPPs as a demanding, complex and time-consuming procedure.

Well heres to the Parnell Square Move! It bodes good for the Square and the vicinity – it needs it!

The national theatre skulking in the back gardens of a terrace of pretty average houses? GUBU!

I also agree. I think it will do absolutely nothing to bring new audiences to the theatre. It’s all well and good talking about a cultural quarter but the existence of Hugh Lane, Dublin Writer’s Museum, the Gate and the Wax Museum have already failed to bring any great vitality to this area – why would the new Abbey change the trend of a generation? Some other use could easily be found for those fine buildings.
I feel that jamming cultural institutions into ill-suited spaces (IMMA, Collins Barracks, the forced changes to the National Gallery), has been a failure in many ways.
It would make more sense for the Dept of Health to move up to the Mhuire and take this opportunity to get rid of Hawkins House and get a genuine landmark building in its place.
Personally, I’d love to see the majority of buildings in that Hawkins St area, Apollo House, Hawkins House, the Screen cinema levelled to make way for a National Theatre, a rebuilt Screen cinema, and so on.
There is so much emphasis put on the rejuvenation of the Docklands and the Smithfield area that it’s forgotten that just a hundred yards from Westmoreland Street, there is an area literally dying on its feet, including at least a half-dozen derelict shops (along Tara Street) as well as the highest percentage of bad architecture (apart from Ballsbridge) in the city.

Don’t get me wrong – I like IMMA. But every time I visit, I find myself one of a handful of people in the place.
Visitor numbers there are around 300,000 a year – less than 850 people a day, free of charge, and including people who only go up for a cup of coffee.
As a for instance, here’s what IMMA’s own curator had to say about it in one interview in the Irish Times: “I knew that we could do with more money, obviously. But I like the building: the architecture is wonderful, though there are limitations. It has its peculiarities. The lack of a large room, for example. And the difficulty of moving things around – it’s not very high-tech from a practical point of view. But then the nature of the space allows us to keep several things going at once, and that is really what I wanted to do.”
If he’s saying that in public, imagine what he thinks in private. Imagine trying to fit a really large work by Claes Oldenburg or Alexander Calder in IMMA. It’s very limiting.
Collins Barracks suffers some low footfall as well but I hear things have picked up since the Luas line opened.

@vinnyfitz wrote:

Lots more detail in the rest of the article. Hawkins House – as we knew – and Infirmary Rd! which would be an appaling prospect were the other two short listed options.

O’Donoghue seems to have made no reference at all to O’Connell St.

He says he does not have the power to CPO no 1 Granby Row so he wants to see if the OPW could develop the site without the corner. Seems like the IT is facilitating negotiation by megaphone between the Minister and the vendors.

I wonder will the new theatre be fully designed by the OPW or will it be the subject of a competition once a site is eventually acquired?

I read the article during the week and I have to say I was shocked by the value claimed by the vendors, my own estimate of value was 1.65m adopting a generous scenario.

I really think it should be back to the drawing board on this one as far as site selection goes, personally I favour Hawkins House or even an acquisition of College House and the Screen Cinema on Townsend St as it would give a much higher profile. The base line is the Minister was right to walk away from Granby Court but the City needs its National Theatre, I like the idea of Hawkins House going but it would suffer from exactly the same problem as the existing one does, it would have zero profile, where would you get a view from?