The Opera Centre
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@Dan Sullivan wrote:
Hadn’t checked in since I got the letter about the permission, the 18 conditions are the usual run of the mill sort of thing you’d get with any large development. I think the removal of the Ellen st. facades is purely a delaying tactic to ensure they don’t have to start work straight away. They want it to go to ABP in my view.
I think you’re right Dan, they know the history of the previous application where the demolition of the Ellen Street buildings was appealed and subsequently overturned. Also with the length of time its currently taking ABP to sort out its workload, they’ll probably be in a position to ride out the current economic difficulties!
All this of course means we’re going to be left with an ever worsening eyesore for a good while yet!:o:mad:
https://archiseek.com/content/attachment.php?attachmentid=7925&d=1218657464
what have those fuckheads done to our city?
@Tuborg wrote:
Fight over plaza could halt €350m shopping centre plan
A SMALL disputed plaza could jeopardise the future of a proposed €350m shopping centre development .
The Bank Place plaza, at the entrance to Trinity Rooms nightclub in Limerick, is the subject of a compulsory purchase order by Limerick City Council.
The order has been appealed to An Bord Pleanala by operators of the popular nightclub.
Bord Pleanála decision on Limerick compulsory purchase order has been delayed.
Monday 22 September 2008 (Live95fm)
A ruling on Bank Place outside the Granary was expected today, but has been delayed as the Board has not yet seen the report. It’s understood the file is still with the inspector.
The delay will further stall the 350 million euro Opera Centre.
Limerick City Council says the CPO is a vital part of the Centre development while Management at Trinity Rooms is objecting to it, saying it will lead to the closure of their business
A spokesperson for An Bord Pleanála says the matter is at a very advanced stage.
It’s now unclear when the decision will be reached. :confused:
The Opera Centre should keep An Bord Pleanála busy until the property market picks up again. :rolleyes:
An Bord Pleanala have announced that it will now be the end of October before a decision is made on the dispute over the Bank Place CPO.:rolleyes:
Decision on future of Limerick Opera Centre to be known in late October
A decision on the future of the Opera Centre in Limerick will not be known until the end of October.
Limerick City Council is waiting for An Bord Pleanála to rule on the compulsory purchase of a small plot of land outside the Granary known as Bank Place.
A spokesperson for the planning board said today it will be late next month before a decision is made on the CPO.
This will further delay the start of the redevelopment of the Patrick Street – Ellen Street area which was initially mooted in 2005.
Why be pathetic
Why wait and be pathetic?
An bord an pleanala. You are being pathetic. If there was a genuine reason for the wait fair enough. But, waiting another month? What’s the point of it. Oh god I dunno…….
Confirmation of the Irish Georgian Society appeal to An Bord Pleanala.
The case is due to be decided by 13-02-2009.
I had a look at the DouglasWallace website and found this.
Its basically just a load of annoying PR nonsense but anyway…
Situated in the heart of Limerick’s historic quarter the Opera centre will lead the regeneration of a city centre in a state of decline. The proposal creates an outstanding retail experience and with the enthusiastic support of the all the stakeholders will provide a bright future for the people of Limerick.
Externally the proposal consists of ground level shop units opening onto the street, their display and activity expressed and reinforced through the glass and metal facade framed over with signage. The area above street level is punctured by a series of protruding lightboxes and retail display to create rhythm and verticality which help to break down the scale of the facade to match the urban grain of the surrounding Georgian plot pattern. The restaurant is emphasised by projecting out it’s double height space and this marked focus helps to express the associated activity and use externally to the streetscape.
The materials used are planar glazing, fritted opaque glazed cladding, aluminium cladding and white/grey limestone cladding with the opaque glass and aluminium cladding used primarily at ground floor level. Above, a banded cut ashlar stone is used, in keeping with stone used in buildings of importance in the Georgian streetscape. This stone façade is then punctured to preserve the lightness of the building.
Internally the circulation areas are treated more as a streetscape than a traditional mall. The glazed roof creates a visible connection with outside and provides large amounts of natural light. Walkways guide the visitor through the space with crossing bridges providing intrigue and invite use of the upper levels.
- 40,000m2 of retail space arranged over 3 No. levels with exciting ‘streetscape’ circulation areas
- create new public spaces which are sadly lacking in the existing city centre as nodal points along pedestrian circulation routes and form a relationship with the river
- inviting entrance areas encouraging visitors to enter the centre
- roof garden and food court for social and leisure activities increasing footfall to the upper l
evels - sculptural café pavilion in riverside public space
- 500 spaces in basement parking to enhance the parking already provided within the city centre.
Attached are mock-ups of the Bank Place and Ellen Street entrances along with the rooftop garden.:rolleyes:
Truly hideous, and it would be a scar on the streetscape. The run down buildings *almost* look better! Certainly they probably look better even in current condition than all that light coloured structure will in anything from months to years when the weather gets hold of it (probably months – look at that place on bedford row – magically modern buildings are somehow expected not to need gutters or some arrangement of the facade that dirty water doesn’t run down it).
Just a glorified 21st century Arthur’s Quay…
You have to love the way they’ve photoshopped a couple of quaint litttle Georgian buildings into the background of the Ellen Street shot. In reality the site where those imaginary buildings stand is currently occupied by a surface car park and a service yard for a nightclub and a pub!:rolleyes:
Note also how the buildings on the right hand site of Ellen Street have had their pitched roofs magically re-instated at the click of a mouse!
Its just a pity they dont show a similiar interest in the buildings on the opposite side of the street!:mad:
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
And it suffers from the usual lots of glass, which will be covered up by the retailers
Views of the existing Streetscape.Whatever about the individual quality of the 1990s in-fill, and not knowing the condition of the buildings/sites they replaced, at least they left the ‘Georgian’ streetscape repaired and largely intact.
The ‘Opera Centre’ scheme goes for maximum impact by way of maximum contrast. The problem with this approach is that it robs the existing streetscape of it’s recently mended coherence, it dates very quickly, the vast areas of glass never look as impressive in reality as they do in the developers’ brochure, it invites misuse by retailers (as Paul said), and the glitzy new corners, instead of patinating into maturity, inevitably start the slow slide into shabbyness from the first day the scaffolding comes down.
Unfortunately, when the sky is that blue, the glass is that shimmering, and the virtual people look like they just strolled off the plane from Milan, it’s hard not to be captivated by the images!
I like the sky view pic, I think it looks fantastic. It doesn’t look cheapish at all. I do like how they incoparated the Georgian into the whole front of the complex.
Guy’s would you f**** lay off the pognance for a while. Seroously. Like what are you looking for instead.
Irish people really have no innovation or radical minds. Really none of you have, none of you can come up with something bettter. But whinge all day long. Bottom line none of you will be happy. It’s all so easy to be so negative. Every deveolopement will have its positive and negatives. Irish people prefare to sit all day and moan about how it’s not up to the job. If you don’t like it, come up with something better. If you don’t have anything and you don’t have your money out on the table. I suggest you shut up. Life goes on.
Will you all bloody smile for once.:rolleyes:
dave123:
Seriously, it isn’t hyperbole. Just look at the condition of buildings finished only months or a year or two ago, not to mention anything from the early 00s or 90s. They have barely been designed in a way that ensures they look good even in the short term, nevermind 5 or even 10 years (and really I see no reason why building in the city centre shouldn’t be considered for 50 years at a minimum – it’s quite wasteful to have this “disposable building” mentality).
Can you not bend your mind as to how the structures in the mock-up will look like in real life, and more particularly after just a couple months of exposure to the elements?
As for new ideas, I certainly do want to see some. How about instead of yet another iteration of the failed city-centre mall idea, we get more extensive pedestrianisation and some “anchor stores” for the city centre in general? Debenhams and Brown Thomas are absolutely pathetic compared to real department stores on the continent for example (I don’t really have enough experience of the UK to compare – I’m guessing they are similarly miserable – that’s where we’ve got all the same broken ideas that we’ve been using).
@dave123 wrote:
I like the sky view pic, I think it looks fantastic.
Guy’s would you f**** lay off the pognance for a while. Seroously. Like what are you looking for instead.
It doesn’t always have to be a debate about one extreme or the other, ‘mock Georgians’ or
‘glass prisms’, there’s a whole range of contemporary architectural solutions that could announce the insertion of a new shopping district into a predominantly Georgian streetscape, without reaching for the glass cladding brochures.This is a somewhat similar development situation snapped recently from a hoarding in Lubeck.
I’m not sure if it’s going to be entirely successful, but at least these guys had enough sense to limit the glass to a few featured openings in a otherwise stone facade, and they also managed to design the scheme with a contemporary reference to the Hanseatic gabled tradition that, in Lubeck, is the predominant architectural characteristic of the city. I also like the fact that their promotional image doesn’t try to cod people that there will always be a Mediteranean sky!
I’m just posting it to demonstrate that there are other options.
To me, the images of the ‘Opera Centre’ ring all kinds of alarm bells that we haven’t actually learned anything after 80 years of the Modern Movement. We still think that retaining any sense of a unified coherence to a city is backward looking, that keeping the odd disembodied facade is enough to retain ‘the character’ of a street, and that shopping centres are so important, and hard to find, that they need four storey, block and a half deep, illuminated glass entrances.
I don t see how that development would be in anyway better than whats on offer with the opera Centre. I dont see the issue with glass and if thats the alternative, give me the Opera Centre anyday.
That Lubeck design is truly hideous Gunter and I have to agree with Dave123..what exactly do ye want..restore georgian buildings to their original format, and be left with buildings that are about useful restored as they are in their current state. If people want new life in the city centre then compromise is needed but that yoke in Lubeck is not in any way appealing to me. I’d prefer the glass. People seem to have the idyllic notion of european developments being so much better when in my own experience in the likes of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the UK there are way worse examples than whats being proposed here.
I cant say i’m sorry to see some of the Ellen Street buildings go either because its a horrid street. Dark, pokey and dingy, the street is too narrow and the light is blocked by the buildings height. Its the one street in the city with Georgian Stock that is just too narrow imo to carry the buildings well. Thats not because of modern developments either, it is a just a very narrow street relative to the likes of O’Connel street or William Street and is all the worse for it. I will be sorry to see the Quinns building go but thats about all..the rest no loss imo.
My only real concern with the Opera Centre is the rear of the development along side the Granary and the old Workspace..there’s been little mention of that anywhere..and I’m curious to whats the plan for this aspect of the devlopment
I’m sorry but all this talk about the demolition of one side of Ellen Street being in some way acceptable is absolute rubbish! Just how bland do you want this city to become? Demolition of historic streetscape is just not acceptable and especially not when its replacement is a garish plastic monstrosity. Anyone who thinks the proposal for Ellen Street is superior to the existing streetscape is seriously kidding themselves!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am in favour of the opera centre because I understand how important it is to the viability of the city centre but that dosent mean it should be allowed sweep all before it. I just don’t get why we are so reluctant to retain perfectly good historic buildings in this country, we just cant be arsed it seems!:mad:
Some of you over enthusiastic supporters of this project need to realise that there are other issues here apart from just extra shopping space!
Remember back in 1987 Arthurs Quay was heralded as some kind of masterpiece in urban planning. It also involved the demolition of a number of georgian buildings (admittedly in poor shape but not beyond repair). Fast forward 20 short years or so and they are planning to pull the whole thing down again. Some masterplan that was!:rolleyes:
The Vintage Club House of Quin/Garden World, Ellen Street (NIAH)
Attached seven-bay three-storey over concealed basement limestone former bonded store, built c. 1760.
Appraisal
An attractive symmetrical limestone former bonded store. It is significant in terms of the quality of the external stonework. Now in use as a pub and garden shop, this structure adds variety both in height and materials to the streetscape.See previous post: Opera Shopping Centre a watershed for Limericks Georgian Heritage?
Fact is once they are gone, up to two hundred and fifty years of history goes with them!
@vkid wrote:
..what exactly do ye want..restore georgian buildings to their original format, and be left with buildings that are about useful restored as they are in their current state.
vkid, I think you’re trying to set the urban debate back forty years. The building stock on Ellen St., Rutland St. Patrick St. etc. is part of the collective assets of Limerick City. If you dispose of these assets, you’ve got to be bloody sure that you’ve replaced them with someting of higher value.
I accept that the site could use a regeneration package, but I’d like to see it done in a way that protects and enhances the existing building stock, rather than a 1970s style scorched earth approach. Ok, it can be difficult to find good examples of how this is done well, because, of their nature, the good schemes don’t shout out ‘redevelopment’ in the same way.
This is an example of decent contemporary in-fill on O’Connell Street (by the same Limerick architects who are doing that scheme (with the medieval fireplace) at 36-39 Nicholas Street). There’s no question that the architectural skill are there, what is required, is more hands-on guidance by the Planning authorities to set out the boundaries.Surely an ‘Opera Centre’, with the same long term impact, could be delivered, that has three or four, high quality, contemporary interventions acting as gateways into the complex, through a retained and restored streetscape.
Sometimes, when you push the developer far enough, he realizes, later on, that being forced to address conservation challenges ends up with him creating a unique development, and he goes on to make more money . . . . (and the architects won’t have to worry so much about meeting up with Sam Stephenson on judgement day).
The relative completeness of the ‘Georgian city’ in Limerick, from Bank Place to the Crescent, is quite impressive, but’s it’s a precarious thing, so much has been lost that it’s very dificult to say at what point the legibility and coherence could also be lost.
Look at Bank Place, now reduced to just three 18th Century houses, when it was the glossy dust cover to the whole post-medieval ‘new town’!
[We’ll come back to those tantalizing key stones and skew-backs and the similarities between the Bank Place terrace and the demolished George’s Quay terrace opposite, on another thread.]@Tuborg wrote:
I’m sorry but all this talk about the demolition of one side of Ellen Street being in some way acceptable is absolute rubbish! . . . . I am in favour of the opera centre because I understand how important it is to the viability of the city centre but that dosent mean it should be allowed sweep all before it. I just don’t get why we are so reluctant to retain perfectly good historic buildings in this country,
That really is the point! If the demolition of a complete ‘Georgian’ terrace, like that on Ellen Street, was ruled out, the way it should have been, the developers would have had to work around it, from day one!
The way I understand it, the ‘Opera Centre’ has already been permitted and that what is proposed now are revisions to the approved development, is that the position, does anyone know?
@gunter wrote:
This is an example of decent contemporary in-fill on O’Connell Street (by the same Limerick architects who are doing that scheme (with the medieval fireplace) at 36-39 Nicholas Street). There’s no question that the architectural skill are there, what is required, is more hands-on guidance by the Planning authorities to set out the boundaries.Looks surprisingly like O’Connell Street in Dublin
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