Development of Dun Laoghaire seafront
- This topic has 108 replies, 30 voices, and was last updated 16 years ago by
.
- Posts
@mollox wrote:
….., the breakwater could become a more substantial causeway for pedestrians incorporating a cyclepath.
Nice idea on paper – but are there not rules about cycling on the pier? It would have to be a substantial breakwater to withstand the gales – and we get one every six weeks on average. When a NE gale coincides with high tide, waves wash over the East Pier with regularity. So, when there is a gale and the seaweed is washed over the b-water, how is the “pool” cleaned?
The park at Newtownsmith regularly has weed on it after a gale; it was created by infill in the 1930’s??
KB2Cycling on pier – just a change of bye-law required. Presumably S2S will have to cross the top of the pier anyway.
Storms – beach open Mar-Oct (see post 20th Apr) so winter storms not such a problem. Pool can be drained by sluice gate at low tide and/or pumping mechanism (see original “plan” 17th Apr ). Regular clean-up operation to be carried out by DLRCoCo (stop laughing!) or whoever they appoint to manage whatever they decide to do with old baths.
On the continent a heavily used public beach facility would be cleaned daily by the local authority.I’m a local and anything to push that decrepit negligent shower of donkeys on Marine Road into action is ok by me. On this particular scheme; i think it’s good, and worth examining. However DLR is now a notoriously difficult place to work in. Inertia is the order of the day. Nothing has changed in years. There are backward idiots who believe reintroducing traffic onto George’s street will save the traders. There’s pathetic traffic management in the town, and the shoppin centre needs bombing…
but yeh keep pursuing these things and don’t let comments like “poxy vanity projects” get in the way. when was the last great development ever described as anything else?
Who doesn’t love the beach? I know i do
Mollox you should know better than floating an idea that is ambitious and anyway different from the norm,
(in this, the land of begruders)🙂 Off to Paris this morning for a couple of days. Maybe I can cadge a couple of plastic palm trees and surplus pedalos from their plage and get this project off to a flying start. From the timing of this, you can tell I’m flying Ryanair.
Mollox,
I was in Brum yesterday and they also are going down the beach route – at a cost of £50k. See
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/birminghampost/news/tm_headline=beach-comes-to-birmingham&method=full&objectid=18949190&siteid=50002-name_page.htmlI have no problem with the creation of a beach, it is the suitability of the location that I have the issues with. If one is to be built by DLRCC, a breakwater extending westward from the existing pharbour at Sandycove would make a lot more sense – that position is protected from all points of the compass, would give far more shoreline, ease congestion and be cleaned by the tides. Personally, looking at the vast expanses of flesh on view in DL today, and comparing that with what is on view in Paris, free burkas from DLRCC would be better advised.
@KerryBog2 wrote:
Personally, looking at the vast expanses of flesh on view in DL today, and comparing that with what is on view in Paris, free burkas from DLRCC would be better advised.
😀
Now how do I explain that belly laugh to my colleagues?@ctesiphon wrote:
😀
Now how do I explain that belly laugh to my colleagues?you don’t – you encourage them to join the site
KB2, Let’s not involve Mairin de Burca or vast expanses of flesh in this debate. I’ve a weak stomach – my long weekend in Paris was more plague than plage. I was hors de combat for a couple of days with a dose of the Galway Gallops, accompanied by the occasional burst of Liquid Laughter. Dirty ice in my Ricard, perhaps. Could we lend Minister Richard Roche to Paris?
Birmingham Plage sounds like something I saw in Beauvais town centre a couple of years ago where the only water involved consisted of a couple of showers provided to cool people off. It was good for a passing laugh but seemed to provide little real amenity value – very few visible users.
My particular beach proposal, specifically the location, arose from last’s years cock-up/impasse regarding redevelopment of the long-derelict baths complex. The theory is that developing a seaside amenity, with much wider family appeal, connected to modified baths/catering facilities, would greatly increase the chances of the overall amenity being successful i.e. popular and well used by the community. The local DART service and multiple bus routes into Dun Laoghaire would make it accessible to a wide catchment area. Traffic management/parking is already an issue in DL, but the invisible gardai will be no more effective in Sandycove than they currently aren’t in DL.
Sandycove also has many appealing possibilities, as you’ve outlined. What then would you do with the baths?
Mollox,
Sorry to hear about the innards, but I would not blame the ice. Like Ireland, Paris has a dual water system, potable and non-potable, the latter pipe system used for street cleaning, hydrants, park sprinklers, etc. However, Ireland’s dual system is best described as toxic and not-so-toxic, depending on where you live. In DLR spice is added by cross-percolation, due to broken/rusted cast iron supply/soil pipes.Re votre plage – DL baths should be refurbished and modernised, with no major development. Call it pastiche if you like, but that is what should be done. They were on their last legs in the 1960’s, every north easterly added to an unrepaired trail of destruction, the cubicle doors (I clearly remember the blue colour) were rotting off their rusted hinges, the storms cracked the pool walls and parts were plain dangerous. It was easy to bunk in over the wall and spend the 6d on a cone in Teddys. Zero maintenance allowed this (thankfully to me at that time.)
The Baths revival as the Waterworld (or whatever it was called) in the early ‘80’s showed that there remained a big demand; at that time it was a developer who had the lease (can’t recall his name, but he built that really horrid shopping centre in Tallaght village….)
My objection to your proposal is not the idea of developing a beach, it is the choice of a highly unsuitable location (from an oceanographic perspective) that would lead to costly on-going maintenance. Tout court.
KB2@KerryBog2 wrote:
Re votre plage – DL baths should be refurbished and modernised, with no major development. Call it pastiche if you like, but that is what should be done. They were on their last legs in the 1960’s, every north easterly added to an unrepaired trail of destruction….. My objection to your proposal is not the idea of developing a beach, it is the choice of a highly unsuitable location (from an oceanographic perspective) that would lead to costly on-going maintenance.
KB2KB”: It seems to me that your refurtbished and modernised baths will also need additional protection (from an oceanographic perspective). Anything that would provide shelter for the baths could surely provide added protection for my beach?
If you were bunking into the baths in the 60s, you probably knew all the Cluny & Dominican convent girls who used hang out there (before my time but my brother told me about it).
@KerryBog2 wrote:
The Baths revival as the Waterworld (or whatever it was called) in the early ‘80’s showed that there remained a big demand
Wasn’t it Rainbow Rapids? 😮
I have similar memories of bunking into the derelict Blackrock Baths in the late 1980s, KB2, but that’s a story for another day.
(FJP has photos of both sites, fyi.)
Yeah Rainbow bleedin Rapidz. Didn’t some poor lad slice his leg open on some cracked plastic on one of the shoots? I never went back.
According to the latest edition of the Lifetimes freesheet, DLRCoCo “have chosen an international engineering firm to carry out a feasibility study for the re-development of the town’s sea bathsâ€. I can’t see any reference to this on http://www.dlrcoco.ie.. The article gave no indication of a timeframe for a report/ recommendation.
The attached photo illustrates one of the problems with the existing baths, quite apart from its complete exposure to the elements on the seaward side. The buildings throw their shadow across the pool area – a problem that’s exacerbated in the off-peak months when the sun is lower in the sky. While this shade might be desirable on a limited number of our hottest summer days, those are vastly outnumbered by days when you’d want to be on the sunshine side of the pool.
When the complex was built in Victorian times, this may well have been regarded a s a bonus, as a sun tan was evidence of employment in some form our outdoor labouring employment
@ctesiphon wrote:
Wasn’t it Rainbow Rapids?
Thanks ctesiphon, that’s it! The developer’s name was Seamus Greally.
Mollox – I was never a fan of the Cluny girls, too close to home, the sisters went there! This is not the site for the different merits of HCK, Loreto or Glengara!:)
The baths site is not in the corner, so the cross-seas would not be as bad. On the seaward side of the baths they could install some armouring with large boulders leading to an angled barrier-wall with integrated wave deflector. My guess is that would be sufficient (but I am not an expert.) There is a wave deflector on Jim Sheridans house (de Blacam & Meagher) on Dalkey Sound, http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/images/2007/0412/1176156959231_1.html seems to have worked, although he is now selling, supposedly for 7-8 million.
On a day like today it is hard to think that the sea can be so powerfully violent.
KB2Can someone explain the nostalgia for the baths to me? To me these are no more than concrete boxes that disfigure the shore. Why would anyone want to swim in a concrete box full of seawater rather than the sea itself? Why would you repose on concrete in an area concentrated with other people and their noise and filth when you could repose on the sand or the flat rocks that are cleaned by the sea twice a day? Am I missing something here? Does the seawater heat up in the pool? Is it safer? Is there some victorian structure of beauty beneath the concrete?
FT: I don’t suppose anyone would be attracted to swimming in the baths as they currently exist. And obviously not enough people were attracted when they were open. The protests last year had a touch of “Bewleys Syndrome” about them – if everyone who claimed to have been a regular and frequent user of the baths was telling the truth, the place would have been overrun with customers every day.
Presumably any plan for new baths will have to be a much more attractive facility – people will now want something of the quality of such facilities they’ve experienced on holiday abroad. Unfortunately, the ingredient that can’t be supplied is the sunshine, which is an essential ingredient for the young “leisure“, rather than dedicated, swimmer. These young “leisure” swimmers would constitute the majority of the potential customers of a new baths.
I have no problem with a new baths being built, provided it can generate sufficient public usage. The last thing we need is a political cop-out, bowing to the pressure of last year’s protesters and building a facility which will be significantly underused. In those circumstances, we’ll be having another debate, a decade later, about what to do with the “new” baths as they show the results of under-investment in maintenance because of low public usage and the toll exacted by the sea and the salt.
The purpose of my beach proposal was to provide an amenity, either on its own or coupled with a new baths facility, which would broaden considerably the scope and appeal of what’s available in the immediate area, thereby attracting a much wider audience, with particular appeal, I hope, to children – from toddlers (and their minders) to teenagers.
Two rival designs for development of Dún Laoghaire unveiled
The Irish TimesA multimillion-euro plan to transform Dún Laoghaire’s coastline into a “world-class” tourist attraction was unveiled yesterday. Two designs for the site along the East Pier to Sandycove were presented to councillors at a private local authority meeting. “Concept A”, which would cost €129 million, envisages a lagoon beach and a pedestrian bridge adjacent to the East Pier. An aquatic play area is intended for the old public baths site, alongside a civic space comprising a restaurant and spa. An underground car park with up to 500 spaces would be provided for visitors. “Concept B” would cost €92 million and involves provision of a new promenade and sandy beach from the East Pier to the Newtownsmith section. The works entail construction of offshore and shore-connected breakwaters approximately 250m (820ft) out to sea. A new water sports centre in a revamped Sandycove Park would feature. Either concept would be a massive undertaking and necessitate reclaiming one and a half acres of land from the sea. Councillors decided both should be presented for public consultation.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0222/1203619239302.html
Two rival designs for development of Dún Laoghaire unveiled
The Irish TimesA multimillion-euro plan to transform Dún Laoghaire’s coastline into a “world-class” tourist attraction was unveiled yesterday. Two designs for the site along the East Pier to Sandycove were presented to councillors at a private local authority meeting. “Concept A”, which would cost €129 million, envisages a lagoon beach and a pedestrian bridge adjacent to the East Pier. An aquatic play area is intended for the old public baths site, alongside a civic space comprising a restaurant and spa. An underground car park with up to 500 spaces would be provided for visitors. “Concept B” would cost €92 million and involves provision of a new promenade and sandy beach from the East Pier to the Newtownsmith section. The works entail construction of offshore and shore-connected breakwaters approximately 250m (820ft) out to sea. A new water sports centre in a revamped Sandycove Park would feature. Either concept would be a massive undertaking and necessitate reclaiming one and a half acres of land from the sea. Councillors decided both should be presented for public consultation.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ire…619239302.html
========================================
Presumably, if either of these proposals resemble my “Plage”, they’ll be sending me an appropriate fee.:rolleyes:
I sent the proposal to Owen Keegan of DLRCoCo in August 2006 and didn’t even get an acknowledgement.:(Thought of you Mollox when I read this. I’ll claim my bit of that fee for my input on the breakwater – I see they are planning 250m of it! Waiting to see plans first, but the underground car park in such a marine environment could be a bit fishy (literally!) Went by there some weeks ago and saw a drift of seabirds, oystercatchers and the like ,sheltering on the park, with heads firmly tucked under their wings as the waves lashed the coast. If they in-fill from Sandycove Baths to the East Pier it will be just adding to existing infill, as the park at Newtownsmith is of relatively recent creation (1940/50’s?) Anyone know?
K.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
