Devin
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DCC granted themselves permission for the refurbishment / completion of the square – 4569/09. Check out the number of 3rd party submissions to it in ‘view documents’ … lot of interest. But no appeal right since it’s a Part 8 application. As can be seen in the photo below, work has just started at the top of the square. Some greenery is being put in.
There seems to be no formal copy of the ‘Smithfield Quarter Enhancement Scheme’ available online, but there’s a scanned copy of it here in the documentation with that planning app. – http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00294646.pdf
Nice to see that the Scheme is drawing attention to the significance of the surviving old streetscape at the top of Smithfield (Cobblestone pub etc.) Section 2.0 seeks to “identify, understand and conserve the smaller and finer grain of the earlier C17th/C18th building typologies with their long linear arrangement of the building plots which are embodied in the street-fronted structures at the north end of the Square/North King Street … This historic streetscape is of huge historical and architectural import as it provides the original scale to the C18th market place.”
And speaking of that very streetscape, this horror proposal for Nos. 82-83 North King Street was granted permission by Dublin City Council (never!) last year, appealed by An Taisce and has now been overturned by the Bord – http://pleanala.ie/casenum/235886.htm
It was for a replacement infill building on the site of No. 82, demolition and facade retention of the early-20th century Delaney’s pub at No. 83 (which is Georgian behind the facade), then uniting the two under a whopping Supervalu-Portlaoise mansard roof wiping out pitched roofs and chimney stacks to No. 83. If you look through the drawings, it was actually not a bad scheme in terms of accommodation provision, with a design around a courtyard, but as a vision of how to develop historic streetscape grain, it was fairly horrific stuff.
The streetscape here really is of value and needs careful repair and infill, maintaining existing qualities. So much of this kind of thing was lost – on the Quays and elsewhere – that we should carefully cherish remaining areas. They are the essence of urban Dublin. The restoration of No. 81 by architects for their offices stands as an example of what can be done.
The Cobblestone pub ought to put some effort into the presentation of their building. It’s in an awful state with painted brick and mismatched half-PVC / half-sash windows and lack of upkeep. Suppose they think because they’re a ‘cool old kip’ pub it’s ok to look like that …. a bit of conservation work wouldn’t go astray.
This website – http://www.dublincitycycling.ie/node/add/cycle – promised lots of sorely needed new bike-locking stands around the city a year ago. You clicked on the map to suggest a location. But none have yet been put in. What is the problem??
Smithfield is particularly woeful. There isn’t a single bike-parking stand on the whole ginormous square. Black-framed spectacle wearers heading to an indy film in Lighthouse have nowhere to lock their bikes, except the tapered architectural grey lamps in the ante square which are all scuffed now due to this.
Cyclists fight amongst each other for the solitary pole outside Fresh supermarket
Please put some in urgently! as per here at Fresh, Grand Canal Basin.
The only bike-locking in Smithfield at the moment is here in a quiet arse-end corner of the Smithfield Market scheme. Obviously the developers Fusano or others involved don’t cycle because as every cyclist knows the first consideration for locking your bike in Dublin is a visible well-lit location with the passive security of good footfall.
Incredibly, these stands fall into blackness after dark. You may as well just go up to the tracksuit, hand him your bike and tell him that the tyres have a puncture resistant layer.
I would like to know just how many Spanish childminders, Asian English students etc. were introduced the hard way to Dublin life after innocently locking their bikes here in the 5 years since Smithfield Market was built ………. one of the worst bike-parking locations ever!
Hurry up with the new stands in Smiffy and around the city, DCC. Thousands wait.
Here are some of the buildings involved in that scheme – Nos. 47-54 – before work:
The protected structures Nos. 51-54.
And the two buildings at the corner of Magennis Place. HJ Lyons had refurbished here for their offices 10 years ago. Powder coated aluminium windows and a granite-glad ground floor were put in these buildings, and a new building was built down the lane.
Drawing here of the Pearse Street & Magennis Place frontages before development – http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00023887.pdf
So now the two corner buildings and the derilict ones between them and the protected structures have been redeveloped. I think the new building is a sucessful addition. The scale ok with the location opposite the train station, and that there are big buildings on the opposite side of the street. It would of course be a ghastly intrusion into, say, Westland Row, but it’s not problematic in this location imo. Like the reducing pier things in jura limestone. The planning ref. was 3293/06.
They were naughty after they got permission for the main block and saw where they’d get with a planning application to stick a glass penthouse on top of the protected structures, removing pitched roofs and chimneys, but it was refused – Ref. 5155/07.
A nice refurbishment of the protected structures. But a darker colour should have been maintained for the sash windows. There are too many white sash windows in Dublin!
In pavement reinsatement works, the listed granite kerbing along the frontage of the site has been removed and replaced in white granite in breach of Policy H22 of the Dublin City Development Plan 2005-11 which will “preserve, repair and retain in situ historic streetscape and paving features which are of heritage value and which are located in those areas identified in the Development Plan.” (Pearse Street is identified). As well as being in breach of the development plan, the removal of granite in this location:
- replaces a good quality, local material with an inferior quality, non-local one
- introduces inconsistency where there was consistency
- is unecessary as the traditional granite kerbing is very serviceable and capable of meeting modern requirements
- contributes to incremental loss of historic fabric and character in the city
It’s a pretty bizarre state of affairs when the body responsible for ensuring the preservation of something – Dublin City Council – is removing and replacing it with something different.
What’s more, the City Council did an environmental improvement scheme on Pearse Street back in 2004 which actively maintained and incorporated the surviving areas of historic kerbing, including this section of the street. It’s really f***ed up. Maybe if they don’t want to preserve it they should just get rid of the policy ….
Very small, but here is an old photo showing that shopfront before alteration.
Back to today, and this dirty ugly sign mount has been standing useless outside the same building for ……. months and months, within the O’Connell Street ACA.
What was that in the ACA’s Scheme of Special Planning Control about “ensuring the provision of a high quality public realm that is managed to the highest standards”? (Part VI – The Public Realm)
http://www.dublincity.ie/SiteCollectionDocuments/oconnell_special_planning_control_scheme.pdf
@thebig C wrote:
its the same old rubbish they always engage in. Lopping off floors ……… DCC have been doing this for years.
Em, helllleau, where have you been for the last five years? .. not in Dublin, I take it. Modifying development went off DCC’s radar sometime back in 2004. Make hay while the sun shines was it. If you can think of a major scheme DCC truncated / curtailed / redesigned since then, please let me know. Scenario almost without exception went as follows: applicant comes in with ridiculous OTT overdense proposal in spirit of the times→ DCC does dance with rubber stamp→scheme gets hammered on appeal.
The Planning Enforcement system in Dublin is not working. There is something deeply wrong, because there is a planning enforcement system but it is not working.
. 
As documented earlier in the thread, this Spar(left), in a sensitive location opposite the seventeenth-century St. Mary’s Church (now pub), had put up plastic box signs on the shop fascia when it opened in 2006, which are contrary to section 15.32.4 of development plan. A complaint was lodged at the time, but the signs were still there when it shut recently. And now it’s been replaced by some homemade paddy-ass version (right) which is using the same unauthorised box-signs on the fascia, except bigger.
Discussion here with some ‘luminaries’ of cycling in Dublin – http://vimeo.com/12390413
Would like to have heard more from the DCC cycling bloke bout their immediate plans for making cycling easier in Dublin …… seems to be leaning back there for most of the discussion – perhaps basking in the reflected glow (from A. Montague) of the success of the Dublin Bikes scheme. I heard a year ago that DCC were putting in much needed new bike locking stands in lots of points around the city. Where are they?? I haven’t seen any yet. How long could it take to go and do this? There’s such a dearth of them in some places it’s ridiculous – egs. Smithfield, O’Connell Street, George’s Street.
Also contra flow lanes desperately needed in several locations. This can be done without a redesign of the city. Shouldn’t require lengthy coordination with city trffic engineers. Eg. if you’re cycling from the cineplex end of Parnell St. to O’Connell Street, you have to do three sides of Parnell Square to get there.
What has come over Dublin City Council?? Planning application at North Star Hotel opposite Connolly Stn. for 8-storey new hotel building on current surface parking area to rear of hotel. In decision to grant permission newly out, they lobbed three storeys off (Ref. 3931/09).
Also whacked three floors off recent 10-storey proposal for M&S Mary Street loading bay area – 2121/09 (eventually got refused on appeal)
But WTF? They just rubber-stamped every ridiculous proposal that came into them during Celtic Tiger. Such changes like these were unheard of ……. maybe they’re finally sick of seeing their decisions savaged on appeal ….
Peats Electronics have had their “temporary” shop sign on the landmark Pen Corner building on Dame Street for more than a year now. A slap-it-up-on-a-Friday-afternoon job, still there a year later.
Shouldn’t DCC be taking a proactive stance to uphold the quality of the city centre, rather than just wait ’til such time as someone makes a complaint about something like this, with the drawn out planning enforcement process following, and inevitable playing for time behaviour of offendees? …….. seems crazy that buildings can just have this done to them for an ongoing period of time … in what is supposedly a major European city.
Canary in the coalmine for PHASE TWO of the building recession got to be planning applications for city-centre surface car parks. This one for a site on the Grand Canal Basin adjacent the new theatre was refused by DCC – 4499/09. The refusal has been appealed by the applicant, Kilsaran Concrete – details.
And now the Carlton want a surface car park on the site of the Royal Dublin Hotel, Upper O’Connell Street – 2373/10
@arachide wrote:
Any news on the Ormond Hotel?
The good news is permission for its demolition has expired (it was granted permission on appeal in September 2004 and so expired five years later – last September – thus avoiding the new, CIF-prompted rule where developers can extend permissions without reapplying, which came into force this January). Appeal Ref. is PL29N.207208. The bad news is, well, I don’t have to tell you what the bad news is.
Here is a picture of part of it in the early noughties when it was nicely painted and had timber sash windows and was open as hotel …… before the owner tastelessly painted it white, filled it with PVC windows, got permission for its demolition, closed it up and basically let it sit there like a piece of shit.
Yeah the Subways are becoming a big problem. They are fast food with the associated nasty signage.
Previously posted, but this one (pic below) opened a year or two ago within Coleman’s newsagent on the back of the toileting of Westmoreland Street ….. in a protected structure within the O’Connell Street ACA.
The ACA’s Scheme of Special Planning Control states, under ‘(1) Land Use – General Controls on Changes of Use’, that there are ‘no locations in the area of Area of Special Planning Control that are considered suitable for additional fast food outlets’.
The shopfront the building currently has was installed about 10 years ago under planning application <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=2375/99&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%202375/99. The second of the un-numbered conditions avaliable in that link states:
‘… The glazing shall not be used for the purpose of sticking posters advertising material related to the sale of goods in the shop and in this regard all such signage shall be removed … All goods or signs displayed inside the shop shall be kept back at a distance of no less than 300mm from the glazing … Signage shall be restricted to the fascia and shall consist of individually mounted or hand painted lettering and product advertising shall be restricted to an absolute minimum. (e,g, gifts, newsagents).’
The fifth condition states:
‘… no further signs including any signs, neon or otherwise, exhibited as part of a window display affixed to the inside of the glazing, illuminations, advertising structures, banners, canopies, flags, lighting fixtures or other projecting elements shall be erected or fixed to the building without prior grant of planning permission. Reason: to protect the architectural integrity of a Listed building and in the interest of the streetscape in an important Conservation Area.’
So the Subway doesn’t comply with the provisions of the O’Connell Street ACA or the conditions of the shopfront planning permission. But so what? Westmoreland Street has gone down the toilet …
This Griffins Londis on Grafton Street must be the most outrageous shopfront in the city at the moment because it’s set amongst the largely minimal and professionally-designed fronts of the ‘higher end’ (or not so higher end) shops of the street but has all the worst and most brash attributes of a convenience store in Dublin: bad colour scheme, illuminated signs in the windows, posters on the glazing, multitude of cluttering projecting signs attached to shopfront, projecting sign above ground floor level, associated fast-food use, over-illumination at night, naff ‘traditional’ design of shopfront (with bad detailing and poor relationship between pilasters and console brackets), disharmony with the historic building above etc. etc.
It is contrary to probably 20 different objectives of the Architectural Conservation Area and Scheme of Special Planning Control for Grafton Street, and it’s in a very sensitive ‘tone setting’ location at the top of the street as you enter from the south ….. as if Grafton Street isn’t having enough problems trying to maintain what’s left of its upmarket character.
On online planning search on 49 Grafton Street returns no results, so they are not even pretending to have permission for it.
Standards of city centre signage and public realm works are plummeting at the moment, aside from in a few isolated locations such as O’Connell Street. New signs indicating the College Green Bus Gate are a sloppy mess, with poles projecting above and below the signs (see below). And no chance they would try to combine the signs with existing signs in the street in order to avoid more clutter.
Meanwhile the council’s Roads Maintenance dept. are slapping cheap brittle white granite in amongst 150 or 200-year old yellow granite pavements, even though they are legally required to preserve and protect these pavements under Policy H22 of the Dublin City Development Plan 2005-11.
Has anyone read the new Draft Dublin City Development Plan 2011-17?? It’s full of wondrous guff about the city, while the actual place outside is going to hell!
Dublin City Council does not have a coordinated strategy for city-centre public realm works ……. and it’s not for want of being asked to come up with one.
In fairness, the terrace was standing way out into the street. See the end-building (corner of Palace Street) here in this view from College Green:
But that also meant it was a good point from where to take photos up the street:
