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This project is dead it was entirely predicated on unrealistic growth projections that the economy would grow at 5% plus per year. As not Notjim rightly points out less is definitely more in the current climate and retaining a government agency for a project where the funds aren’t there to build will go down wonderfully when teachers, nurses and gardai are asked to take a 20% pay cut.
I fully agree with Notjim the only way this will be delivered is if a private operator can make it work; there are some funds available for the big infrastructure players who are not too highly geared such as Hoctief but whether they would commit €3bn to this when they could have Gatwick Airport which carries 30m plus passengers and is already built for less than €2.5bn is unclear. What is clear is that exchequer needs to be very prudent going forward as the next S & P downgrade unlike the last will affect the price paid for existing debt.
Without a public planning process for these, there will be no debate as the locations, and as we have seen in central dublin, locations will be based on footfall, not on cultural or heritage grounds.
The scheme in Dublin is one of the most ham-fisted executions of a potentially beneficial scheme I have ever seen. I’m sure the guys at JCD had a real laugh about the sheer lack of research done by DCC and the way politicians were falling over themselves to be the greenest councillors bought the concept that they were delivering a green project when in fact by not looking at the numbers they got a few bikes in return for a contract that had a potential value of millions annually.
Advertisers will of course ask for the locations with the highest footfall and passing traffic levels as they are a business that needs to resell a product to their customer base; all of the advertisers will be represented by local agencies such Ogilvy or McConnells who know their market intimately and will not pay for space that wouldn’t deliver a perceived uplift in product sales.
The job of the Council is to find a list of 60 locations that do not fall foul of the heritage lobby but deliver the footfall and or passing traffic levels required by the advertisers. I have no doubt that in the Borough there are 60 such locations if the Council sit down with the stakeholders in advance to examine on a location by location basis from a list of say 200 potential sites. The real problem with the DCC deal was that a very bad deal was presented after the fact and as a decision that could not be tweaked. This is not the case this time as the deal is still at discussion stage.
DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION: DETERMINING THE EFFECTS OF ROADSIDE ADVERTISING ON DRIVER ATTENTION
Final report of a study funded by The Rees Jeffreys Road Fund
Dr. Mark S. Young
Janina M. Mahfoud
Ergonomics Research Group
School of Engineering and Design
Brunel UniversityWe are all familiar with the contents of that report which was like some other similar reports designed to highlight the problem of 13m HGV trailers being converted to use as quasi billboards for use in fields located beside the inter-urban motorway network. That was a real issue and there were some horrific crashes as a result of 13m*4m billboards appearing least where you expected to see them.
Comparisons with full size billboards are it is felt entirely inappropriate as the deal if it is similar to the DCC debacle would involve posters that are the size of bus shelter ends of which there are clearly far more than 60 in the Borough already and for which there is no proof that people while actually driving have any more chance of crashing into or having accidents gernerally.
DLRCOCO should open site selection up to the stakeholders on this as €1m in the current climate is too much to turn down in principle; it may well be that the only locations that CC will consider are inappropriate but it would be a missed opportunity not to get the stakeholders around the table to examine if summs can be found to ensure that the culture budged isn’t completly savaged by macro economic forces.
The two locations you mention are ‘virtual carpark
‘ for maybe an hour a day in each direction. For the other 23 hours, they move freely enough that large, internally-illuminated, double-sided scrolling screens would likely be a significant distraction from the primary task of drivers, i.e. driving.If you’d read the Inspector’s Reports from the ABP Oral Hearing into the JCDecaux/DCC deal, you’d see clearly that road safety considerations were the primary reason for refusal in every single case.
Also, you might want to update your records- it’s not a ‘Borough’ any more, and they’re not called ‘listed buildings’. Too long in exile, PV?
Most certainly not I timed my exit to perfection getting overseas experience 18 months before everything went belly up; just enough time to move a couple of times and find a recession freindly position; I’ve never been busier in my life!
Maybe things have deteriorated signifcantly since Lehman Bros but the locations mentioned for the decade pre Lehman fulding were clearly gridlocked from 7am to 930 am morning and 430 to 7pm evening PM.
Why ABP got banning 6 sheets wrong is that they are not much different in scale to a bus shelter end and as such are proven not to be a risk to driver safety as the population has over the years learned to factor them into their calculations in chariot navigation. I’d almost say from anecdotal observations that Bus stop poles are involved in more car related accidentsdue to their lack of visibility with drunks.
€16,667 a year is a market rent or something in the direction of a market rent if it is accurate given the current fragility in consumer spending. DLCOCO are doing the right thing on this as their rates base will hammered in the coming 4-6 quarters; if these funds are ring-fenced for culture and the locations are carefully chosen not to damage heritage value then this would be a good result all round.
johnglas wrote:Two off the top of my head – Cork and Palma]Cork is decent enough, nice scale/form if a little conventional.
@reddy wrote:
I really liked the Shannon extension – Very different from most airports and a really pleasant departure point.
Agreed, but what is the story with the god awful yellow(wtf?) stick-on signage.
@jdivision wrote:
Every bank that loaned for land is in the shitter. Tribune a couple of weeks ago and Business Post last weekend had values on the Irish Glass Bottlers site at c E170m. Anglo loaned E293 for the purchase (following roll up of an extra E5m of fees) which means they’re essentially E125m down on one site. Anglo made a bad debt provision of E500m FOR THE YEAR for all its assets. That’s why Anglo got driven into the ground, it was trying to kid the markets and the market had had enough. They were intentionally not getting formal valuations in order to avoid the loan being classed as impaired and therefore being brought to the audit committee.
South Wharf couldn’t have timed their exit any better to acheive €412m at that point in the cycle was fortuitious; I’d hadly call €293m of lending on a €412m land deal irresponsible in 2007. Are there doubts on Bernard McNamara or Derek Quinlan or the semi-state Dublin Docklands Agency of imminent default? I haven’t heard any.
The markets lost patience with this specialist property lender in the same way they lost patience with RBS/HBoS and Bradford and Bingley in the same way that one bets on falls in oil by buying oil price sensitive shares such as Ryanair hedge funds were able to short Anglo on the basis of it being a pure property sector bet; ironically the complete opposite of that sectorial weighting that saved it from the dotcom fall out.
Valuations for residential development land in the current climate are meaningless as there is effectively no market much as was the case during the first oil crisis in 1973/74. I therefore concur with the JP Morgan report recommending a good bank bad bank split as these assets whilst not reaching the dizzy highs of 2007 any time soon are certainly going to be worth a lot more than their current valuations in 3-5 years time.
I got my delisting notice from my broker on my Anglo Irish Bank shares today; I bet on property and unlike most investments I’ve made this one didn’t work out. We all make mistakes but I wouldn’t say lending c71.11% to a semi-state covenant and professional investors such as D Quinlan or B McNamara was any real mistake.
@MurrayMints wrote:
It is close to a bridge so it will not be in the way of any other bridges that could be built across the river in the future.
Its proximity to the bridge and ncc is part of the problem, whatever people think of the NCC & the James Joyce bridge, there is or will be a pleasing balance between the two.
The location is random, odd & an obvious afterthought – competing with what is likely to become the crux of the docklands – the sculpture deserves better.
This is easily the most pointless thread ever commenced on this forum and some of the solutions proposed are bizarre to say the least. Unfortunately Anglo has one of the better quality landbanks and I say unfortunately because some of the other banks exposed are a lot more likely to dump land for whatever they can get for it. The only real positive is that the loan books of both BOI and AIB are from I have heard contain less exposure to negative equity thanks to them refusing the type of deals BoS Ireland and some other overseas banks were funding.
In a crisis the last thing we need is panic or score settling the key to the problem is getting the same series of positive demographic trends which created the bubble back to underpin what will no doubt be a far more sustainable market.
Employment growth is the key and much like the challenge the UK faced in the Midlands in the mid 1980’s in retraining traditional industry factory workers are being faced in Ireland now i.e. how to retrain an army of surplus construction workers to enagage in technologies and or service sectors.
The residential market will return when large numbers of young professionals want to buy houses / flats and when banks want to lend 75% of the purchase price on an earnings multiple of 3.
The last things you want are either some quazi-totalitarianist solution or pure capital solution of a private equity value fund snapping up thousands of acres.
There is simply a painful reality that there will be a painful period of adjustment to come; I wish you all well through this period.
@darkman wrote:
This time next year, welcome to the 3rd world.
Its always brings a wry smile to the face when spoilt westerners reference their own situation against that of the ‘3rd world’.
Do so accurately darkman, you might cheer yourself up. Start with say Somalia, you know, compare & contrast.
@GrahamH wrote:
A striking structure in its outward form, its inner concept I feel is less successful. The thick glazing, compromised internal sightlines and awkward shape of the wider body when looking inside leaves one feeling somewhat disorientated and unsatisfied with the whole experience. Sitting on the surrounding seating is similarly uncomfortable, having the view of a blank granite wall and expressionless sheets of glass. Views to the interior – even if intentionally so – are extremely constrained both day and night, leaving one questioning what exactly one is supposed to be looking at, given the pyramid is not something to be appreciated at close quarters.
I’d have to agree. The air of poignant respect that normally descends as you approach a war memorial is diminished by what amounts to a brash casing, that achieves little other than to detract from what lies within.
Its like approaching a museum or Gallery only to find that the door is locked. I understand the thinking & connotations behind encasing the memorial but unfortunately it just doesn’t work.
Which is a pity, becasue i think the interior, the actual memorial if you like, with its four representative soliders standing guard is simple & appropriate only to be hampered by the heavy-handedness of the pyramid structure.
So remove the pyramid & re-work – a modest sunken space with the four lads backed by simple pillars facing flame or flag, surrounded by outlying seating – would allow the poignant tone created by semi-enclosure to remain only this time it would be tangible to the visitor.
The money would be better spent on metro style links within the canals…
The money would be better spent on the interconnector, period ! (as george bush might say).
@RoryW wrote:
Similar to the two fingers at AIB HQ
I think the two fingers have fucked off now, haven’t they ?
(Could be wrong but thought they were given the chop as part of the extension/re-design etc.)
@weehamster wrote:
I’m really starting to get pissed off at the moaners here who don’t want this project for really petty reasons.
You can put your block capitals away weehamster. Where did i state that i didn’t want the project or that it wasn’t necessary ? The interconnector and to a lesser extent, metro north, are crucial infrastructure projects for the city, thats not the issue. If you’d read back through any of the thread you’d realise that much of the comment was concerned with alternative construction sites to SSG that could be reinstated exactly as is, i.e. not permanently altered.
To see O’Connell Street being dug up again a few years after its been completed is frustrating, but necessary it seems, and anyway, nobody should know the difference once all is done.
Why the adjacent under utilised road space cannot be used to at least reduce the impact on the green has not been answered, and that is pretty much the point.
@igy wrote:
If what’s put back is in any way representative of what was there before then we’ll be fine
Anything constructed can be put back more or less as is, but its clear now that all of trees on the north east corner will be felled.
Everything lining the railings as far as the blue van, if not further is to go, and the park overall will always bear the scars of this serious mauling.
The contrast will be stark – The new batch of pavement lime trees planted by the OPW 4 or 5 years ago ( a fine job ) are also visible in the shot, if you get your microscope out – this is the average maturity of replacement we’ll be getting once all is done.
Of course there’ll be a few 25 – 30 year olds thrown in there so the RPA can say, look, see, no difference! but the truth is planting semi mature specimens is often unsuccessful, the tree itself will literally stand still for a number of years while it attempts to acclimatise, whereas the younger fella will establish quickly and get going.
We’ll look back and wonder was there no alternative.
I was under the impression myself that it was to be re-built elsewhere in the airport, not quite it seems.
@DAA wrote:
The early stages of the project required
the removal of a number of existing
buildings at the T2 site including the
formerly listed Corballis House.
Prior to the controlled demolition of
Corballis House, the DAA made a detailed
record of the property and its history. All
items of architectural merit from the house
were also carefully salvaged prior to its
demolition.The DAA plans in time to re-use all the
salvaged material, including doors, window
frames, shutters and floor tiles in the
renovation of Cloghran Stud Farm,which is
located close to Dublin Airport. It is also
possible that some of the decorative
plasterwork, salvaged from Corballis House,
will be incorporated within T2.Why would any able bodied person even think of driving to such a large venue, sure while we’re at it why not construct 80000 spaces for croke park and we can all drive to the door or better still, drive in stadia! now there’s an idea :rolleyes:
Regardles of the size of car park that goes in, accessing it will be mayhem, think i’ll walk.
