Devin
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Thanks for that. Good to hear you’re concerned to get an accurate glazing-bar look when making Georgian windows within the constraints of double glazing.
PVC is wretched, to be sure! A product of the petro-chemicl industry.
Meant to put this up:
Spar pays €950,000 for rival lease
Ciarán HancockThe operators of Spar’s flagship convenience store on Merrion Row in Dublin, paid €950,000 in December to buy out the lease on a rival Centra store next door.
The lease was held by Enda Martyn, an experienced retailer, who runs three other Centra shops in Dublin and one in Limerick.
This highly-unusual move by BWG, which operates the Spar and Mace franchises here and is one of the State’s biggest grocery wholesalers, has effectively reduced competition on the bustling street, which is close to St Stephen’s Green and Government Buildings.
The Centra chain is operated and supplied by Musgrave, a large Cork-based rival of BWG.
It is understood Mr Martyn’s shop experienced a €10,000 a week fall in its sales after the Spar shop opened in January 2006.
The Centra store, which was close to the Huguenot cemetery, was long and narrow, offering little opportunity for Mr Martyn to develop a significant rival food and coffee offering. It closed in December with staff offered transfers to other Centra stores.
It is understood the deal was brokered by John Clohisey, who, along with Leo Crawford and John O’Donnell, acquired BWG for €390 million last October. The lease on the Centra shop is expected to be offered for non-retail purposes. Spar is not expected to expand its Merrion Row outlet.
Spar’s shop covers 3,000 sq ft and was formerly an Irish Ferries office. It opened in January 2006 as part of a €4 million pilot scheme of a new store format at three outlets in Ireland that offered an enhanced food service.
It includes an Insomnia coffee shop, the Treehouse juice and smoothie bar and a substantial food-to-go counter, offering hot and cold meals. It also has a seating area and a large off-licence.
The Spar shop is thought to require turnover each week of about €110,000 to break even. Removing Centra from the street has given it the opportunity to enhance its own sales.
In a statement, Centra said Mr Martyn had “traded successfully” at Merrion Row for three years.
“Spar had, for six months, continually offered to buy the leasehold of Centra, Merrion Row, from Enda Martyn. Enda has accepted a generous offer for the leasehold.”
This move calls into question the viability of some convenience stores, with some areas seeming to be close to saturation in some areas.
On Monday, Centra said its sales in 2006 increased by 17 per cent to €1.2 billion. It opened 47 new stores at a cost of €51 million and spent €24 million revamping 64 others.
Donal Horgan, Centra’s managing director, said the group plans to open 37 additional shops in 2007.
© 2007 The Irish Times, March 3, 2007
The Centra shopfront that was bought out by Spar had no planning permission anyway – there’s a surprise. Look at the way a crude new fascia had been slapped on with no design coordination with the existing historic shopfront detailing. They applied for retention for this after it was put up and it was refused – <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=3153/03&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 3153/03. Imagine – a convenience store shopfront refused retention in November 2003 remains in place until it is bought out 4 years later by another convenience store chain with an even higher disregard for planning. What a sham!
Nos. 133 & 134 Pearse Street, opposite the Holiday Inn.
What is the fate of these two buildings?! They seem to be vacant. Every time I go past them they get slightly worse.
It’s very rare to find smaller-scaled post-Georgian buildings in almost completely original condition like this – original brickwork & pointing, roofs, chimney stacks, cast iron downpipes, sash windows with some old glass, panelled doors, simple but gorgeous timber Doric-columned doorcases & spoked fanlight, front steps & railings, even lime-plastered rubble-stone walls in the basement – very rare.
These pictures were taken about a year & a half ago. They’ve got slightly worse since then. I really worry about them. They’re not listed.
It’s a shame that Williamson’s Mall building can’t be incorporated. These Irish town streetscapes are all about each individual building contributing to the overall. They are a work of art in themselves. You take one or two out and the whole thing suffers. This is exactly the kind of thing the ACA’s were to give protection to.
Good coverage of the decorative bollards at the north-end of the street on the prev page, G.
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@GrahamH wrote:
I don’t know if this has appeared before; a very early – 1850s – photo of the GPO bollards when they were still lamp standard bases:
.Some good news on the PVC, er, front for a change. Hanlon’s pub on NCR, from the very start of the thread, has had its awful brown woodgrain PVC windows replaced back to wooden sliding sashes 🙂 .
Exactly – the council have an objective in their Development Plan for new development within the curtilage protected structures which says ‘The Planning Authority will seek to retain the traditional proportionate relationship in scale between buildings, their returns, gardens and mews structures …’ (Section 15.10.2)
While no one’s expecting a coach house to be reconstructed, the general idea is that a new building here would recede and be secondary to Portobello House.
@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:
Has this gone in for planning yet ?
Yes. Decision due quite soon. Keep an eye here: <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=1098/07&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 1098/07
Speaking of distractions, is this campaign coming to Dublin? 🙂
There’s a single storey building called the Georgian Restaurant – might be of the ’70s.
Anthony Reddy himself is a good guy. He was president of the RIAI for the past 2 yrs. and made a fair bit of noise about the planning shambles in Ireland.
But whoever drew up this hugely overblown proposal should have been advised that it would never get through next to a landmark listed historic building.
Award for thee worst addition to a historic building ever goes to Anthony Reddy Associates for this current proposal (below) for Portobello House on the Grand Canal – Ref. 1098/07. All we’ve learnt over the years about adding to historic buildings has seemingly gone unheeded in this proposal ….
I can’t believe the council are still saying that it is a small building in that RTE clip.
Maybe they’ve undergone hypnosis therapy to remove the fact that the increase in size ever happened!
PVC King wrote:Good to see the INBS building getting a revamp it has grown tired in recent years]Yeah, it is designated for removal here in the O’Connell Street Special Planning Control Scheme (scroll about halfway down):http://www.dublincity.ie/Images/ASPC%20Text%20-%20final%20version_tcm35-17124.doc
Advertisement Signs Designated for Removal
Irish Nationwide – between 1st and 2nd floors and 4th and 5th floors – 1 Lower O’Connell Street – internally illuminated and individually mounted lettering. Although the structure has a clear relationship with the use of the building, the size, position and materials and use of internally illuminated lettering detract from this protected structure including the fenestration and stone finishes. Its prominent location at the main entrance to O’Connell Street from the south city seriously detracts from the visual character of the area.Also agree about about the colour of the windows. I hope they will have the good taste to repaint them dark as they were in the early & mid 20th cen. It looked much better.
Hope I’m not sounding like a broken record, but it really needs to be questioned what they did with all the granite – complete pavements or just kerbing – taken up in recent times for works such as Luas.
Both Luases got a completely new street treatment in the city centre. Streets like Harcourt Street, Abbey Street and Chancery Street would’ve had a lot of old granite. Where was it all put, and why do they claim they’ve run out of it now (as they did in the recent Henrietta Street case)? Did they sell it off to help rebuild Iraq or something?
There used to be a huge mound of it piled up in the yard of that Marrowbone Lane depot (which is located between Guinnesses & Cork Street). I saw it myself a few years ago. But it’s gone now.
Re: Granite
There’s a dirty white granite pavement along there now. It would have concrete flags and the old fawn-colored granite kerbs until a few years ago, but it was replaced because the council weren’t enforcing the “listed†status of the old kerbs … and because the new stuff looked good when it was put down …..
I don’t understand what the council mean this time by the “availability of graniteâ€. There is no issue because the old kerbs are gone … new white granite is freely and cheaply available.
Thanks for all the comments on the thread.
BTW there is no and was no new signage to be put on those vacant poles, as the council seem to have told RTE. They’re just leftovers that the CC never bothered removing.
There was also a little piece in the Irish Times on Saturday, and the council have admitted this time that there are no new signs coming for these poles:
USELESS SIGNPOSTS TO ‘BE REMOVED SHORTLY’
Olivia Kelly
Dublin City Council has said it will remove some 180 signposts that have stood in the city centre without any signs attached since the controversial orbital road sign system was scrapped more than four years ago.
Colour-coded traffic signs, which directed motorists around inner and outer routes of the city centre, were erected by the council in August 2002, but were removed soon afterwards on the orders of the then minister for transport S
Yay! Great news about the kiosks.
But why would two be left :confused: …. some desperate face-saving effort by the Council? Let’s just quit our losses DCC and remove the lot!
We want this:
.Yeah, true. It’s ultimately DCC rather than Spar – despicable as they are – that are to blame for this. They have let it get utterly out of hand. The fine words of Dev Plans, Special Planning Control Schemes, Area Plans and other documents ring hollow. It’s time to take control, DCC.
Cheers TLM.
@GrahamH wrote:
Spar on Upper O’Connell Street … in the elegant Lynam’s Hotel building … continues to flagrantly flout planning laws … Having applied for permission to erect a “new internally lit polished steel fascia sign, new SPAR & Dublin Bus projecting signs & new lighting over front elevationâ€, they were rejected outright by DCC in early 2005 … [and] simply hung a banner over the sign, and to this very day it still hangs there, within yards of the GPO.
Yep, that’s it! It’s all a game. They won’t tone it down ‘til Londis across the road tones it down.
The stainless steel lettering – existing behind the banner in the Upper O’Connell Street example – is their default signage, used in locations where they won’t dare try the plastic box. Here it is used on Mayor Street in the docklands – in this case because they had to tow the line with the DDDA’s schemes & guidelines for the new buildings. As you say Graham, it’s a reasonable design.
This was the design to be used on Nos. 51 to 53 Patrick Street, beside the Cathedral, but not before a bit of messing around:
So, here we are, planning application 4223/05 – approved October 2005 – indicating “stainless steel back lit lettering” to the three protected structures beside the Cathedral, with signs corresponding to the original building plot widths. So was this what was put up? You must be joking …
What’s needed here is a nice bit of “temporary†eyecatching signage to get ourselves up and running, eh? That stainless steel stuff just wouldn’t make a sufficient announcement! (even though there is no provision in the Planning Acts for temporary signage).
So finally, 8 months later, stainless steel lettering was installed. But instead of one Spar sign in the centre and subsidiary signs to each side as indicated in the plans, they’ve lobbed two (larger) Spar signs evenly across the three buildings, destroying the plot rhythm.
DCC Planning Enforcement are batting these complaints back. They said what was put up here was acceptable, close enough the plans. They refuse to acknowledge the concept of respecting plot subdivisions.
Whatever about Centra, Spar, as crestfield said earlier, are by far the worst convenience store offenders. They are in an entire league of their own due to a combination of an aggressive expansion programme in the city centre, vile shopfront design and a Jim Mansfield-style attitude towards applying for planning permission.
This plastic hanging box is their standard shop fascia sign, in use on most of their city-centre shops. It is an absolutely ridiculous looking thing and would never get planning permission through the normal channels. It flies in the face of basic shopfront design principles, including the shop signage provisions of DCC’s own Development Plan, which says: ”The signage relating to any commercial ground floor use should be contained within the fascia board of the shopfront. The lettering employed should either be painted on the fascia, or consist of individually mounted solid letters mounted on the fascia” (Section 15.32.4).
It is hard to believe that such a situation could have developed, but although this plastic fascia sign is in use on the vast majority of their shops all around town, not a single one of them has planning permission.
Spar’s website is very helpful, though not in a way it could have intended. The ‘Store Locator’ section gives the exact address of every Spar. You put the address into DCC’s Planning Search Page and invariably it turns out that there is no relevant planning permission for shopfronts/signage at the given address or planning permission/retention has been refused (but ignored).
Nassau Street – no planning permission.
Talbot Street – no planning permission.
Thomas Street – no planning permission.
Dorset Street – beside St. George’s Church – no planning permission.
You’ll search in vain for an approved planning permission for Spar signage on Ellis Quay, beside the Calatrava bridge.
. 
Amid the discreetly-signed shops and cafes along Millennium Walk, Spar’s signage stands out like a cheap lurid decoration, and – surprise surprise – it has no planning permission. They sought permission for it in August 2005 and put it up before the decision was made. It was refused – see Condition 2 in thumbnail (above) – but they left it up anyway, and a year and a half later it’s still in place despite planning enforcement complaints.
Sometimes an illegally-opened Spar will trip itself up by making a subsequent planning application:
Metro newsagent on Lower Abbey Street turned into a Spar sometime in 2005, but didn’t bother applying for permission for the new shopfront and signage. Then in December that year it applied for additional off-licence use. The DCC planner was sharp, spotted that the shopfront was new and made this Additional Information request: “The shopfront and signage to the front of the shop appear to be new. The applicant shall provide details of the grant of planning permission for the new shopfront and projecting sign to the premises” (click <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=6115/05&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20View Documents here to get details). Spar shitted itself and hurriedly made a separate planning application for retention of the unauthorised shopfront & signage.
The additional off-license use was granted permission. The unauthorised shopfront & signage was refused in June 2006 – see here: <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=2564/06&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Spar Lower Abbey Street signage refusal – but remains in place seven months later, even though it is located within the O’Connell Street Architectural Conservation Area, which has its own Special Planning Control Scheme repressing uses such as convenience stores, and even its own specially published Shopfront Design Guidelines.
After the long saga of its refurbishment, St. Mary’s Church/Keating’s pub came into its own last summer with crowds sitting out in the railed area and a good atmosphere. Then what happened? Of course … the picture just wouldn’t be complete … a Spar opens right opposite at 53 Mary Street – as always with no planning permission for its nasty red & white shopfront & signage.
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And they’re still opening – another on Dorset Street (below) towards the end of last year, where you turn down for O’Connell Street. No p.p.
Go away Spar. We don’t want any more of you. Dragging our streets down with your tasteless lurid shopfronts and purporting to reflect our lifestyles with your bad wine selection and polluted cuisine-de-muc breadrolls full of hydrogenated fat.
We have had enough.
.
