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Patrick Street project has only begun last week. It was delayed considerably due to lack of funds. City has borrowed to fund it, and finally, work started.
I heard they’re going to build a chocolate factory there – Can you imagine a chocolate factory opposite one of our greatest heritage sites? Its madness, even an office block would be better than that.
Well, what I mean is since the pitch would need to be turned 90 degrees this would mean the demolition of everything on the site. The first thing to go would be the only proper stand in the ground (East stand I think) since this is between the current pitch and the training pitch. It would take at least two years to build even one stand on the site so the ground would be unusable for at least that period.
The difference between this and redevelopments at Croke Park, Upton Park etc. is that they could use three other sides of the ground to remain open while one stand at a time was under reconstruction because they didn’t need to turn the pitch through 90 degrees. I don’t see anyway that Lansdowne could remain open under these circumstances, the terraces would also be unusable even if they weren’t demolished since bucket seats are being banned by FIFA in a few years time.
I wouldn’t be against temporarily using Croke Park while a stadium was being built if that were a possibility (a very big if), but remember Croke Park has no floodlights and isn’t likely to have any anytime soon, plus their PP is very strict regarding number of events permitted a year etc. All in all i think a greenfield site is the best option whether its at Abbotstown or closer to the city centre.
The Welsh played at Wembley Stadium for two or three years while their stadium was being re-built. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not prepared to see one of our national teams play their home games in a foreign country under any circumstances. This is the main reason why rebuilding Lansdowne is a non-runner in my opinion.
The GAA made a big mistake by not building Croke Park all in one go, it ended up costing way more than they thought because of inflation, so building Lansdowne in a piecemeal fashion (as an above article suggested) and using it at the same time would not be a good idea. I’m sure FIFA/UEFA would have safety concerns too over any such plan. The stands at Croke Park took each took over 2 years to build so it wouldn’t be possible to keep the ground open for games anyway.
Rebuilding Lansdowne is not really a good option because we’d have nowhere to play for the 2-3 years that its out of action. I do agree that a downtown location would probably be better, but its easy to say that – its much more difficult to find a suitable easily accessible site.
Good to see another Irish football fan here. Yeah, fair play to pats on beating Rijeka (of Prague according to those muppets in RTE!!!), will be interesting to see how they get on against a decent Belgian side. Went to Cork Citys Inter-toto game against Metallurgs of Latvia last year, among other City games, although they didn’t go through in the end (mostly due to Liam Murphys crap managerial ability).
Anyway, on a vaguely architectural note, i have an interest in Eircom League grounds and new developments and the like. I hear Pats have got a grant for the development of Richmond Park recently. What exactly are they planning on doing, ‘cos Richmond could do with some money being spent on it. I should start a new thread on this topic I suppose since this has nothing to do with Temple Bar, but I dunno if there’s enough interest here to keep it going.
As far as I know, the railway line behind the Hill 16 end makes it very difficult to build a stand there and complete the “bowl” shape of the stadium. At the moment the GAA’s planning permission says they must put seats on the hill, but apparently they’re re-applying to be allowed leave it as a standing area, although the residents are going to object to that.
On another point, Croke Park must be the only major stadium in the world without a set of floodlights! Its ridiculous when you think about it, even junior football teams have floodlights at their grounds but a £200m+ stadium doesn’t!
I’d blame the decision makers far more than the likes of Gregory to be honest. They don’t have to listen to Gregory if they don’t want to. At the end of the day if they decided to allow taller buildings there what could Gregory do about it? The likes of the DDDA and An Bord Pleanala are ultra-conservative wimps who are scared to make controversial decisions in case someone would say boo to them and the country suffers as a result of their ineptness.
Personally I kind of hope that whole area of the docklands isn’t developed, rather than wasted on the rubbish thats currently proposed. At least that way in the future someone with some vision might actually put something worthwhile there. The whole Spencer dock plan is a carbon copy of the crappy IFSC extension, and what they’re planning across the river is pretty much identical too. The lack of imagination is stunning really.
That git Bertie better deliver on his promise now, he’s been pushing it for long enough. We need that stadium badly, the only thing that might stop it is the state of the public finances, but hopefully they can get a fair share of corporate money to help with the cost. Hasn’t JP McManus offered £50m as it stands? Sell the rights to name a couple of stands as well, that’ll bring in some more cash.
This is looking more and more like a big mistake and a complete waste. The docklands in Dublin are being wasted as it is, with absolutely nothing of any note being built. There’s nothing that stands out, isn’t that part of what architecture is about – to create buildings that stand out, provide a focal point and generate discussion? Where is this in the docklands?
It looks like they’re going to waste another large tract of land under 5 storey monotonous lego blocks. The IFSC extension is so unimaginative its depressing, you’d barely notice it from across the river. They had a bit on the news with Bertie the eejit saying the Citibank bungalow was too high as it was and he doesn’t want “skyscrapers” in Dublin. Its hard to put into words how much of an idiot I think that man is.
It’d be great to see a few tall buildings beginning to show their heads over the mess that the Dublin “skyline” is at present especially in the docklands – wheres the harm in it? The same goes for other cities around the country, but whether it’ll be allowed to happen by the likes of Bertie the eejit is another matter because tall buildings are, as everyone knows, evil (or something).
Frank MacDonalds idea is very good. Building a stadium at the Ringsend bottle plant. The site is twice the size of Lansdowne and is set in a triangle of sport projects in the area. Irishtown Stadium and Sean Moore park. It is ideally situated at the east link and a couple of minutes drive from the port tunnel and about the same distance from the city centre as Lansdowne Road. It is close to the following DART stations: Barrow Street, Lansdowne, Pearse, Tara and Connolly. It is close to the developing Dockland and ferry terminals in Dublin Port. The only problem is bus services but there would probably bus links created if it was built.
£70 million sounds very low alright. Remember Eircom Park? Originally it was to cost no more than £65m, and that was set in stone. Soon after the price inevitably doubled to a much more realistic level. The cost of these things is nearly always under-stated in the plans. The stadium in Wales was to have cost £125m but ended up costing £200m.
It seems though that with Stadium Ireland we are doing the opposite, finding the highest price possible and then working our way back from that. £1 billion is a nice round figure isn’t it? Never mind that thats the over-stated figure for the entire campus not just the stadium. Convenient that some anti-stadium people use that figure as the cost of the stadium alone. 300m euro is a much more realistic price tag for a 65k all-seater stadium.
The stadium doesn’t cost 1 billion, the entire campus costs that (allegedly). The stadium would cost in the region of €300m I would think, and would have large spin-off benefits to the economy. Isn’t there enough traffic on the M50 already without building entire towns along it. Whats needed is higher density housing in existing residential areas, not creating entirely new towns within the city. And how would building a town on the site benefit the whole country?
The stadium part will probably be built to a 60-65k capacity (cost about $300m euro or thereabouts) with the rest of the campus deferred. I’ve always thought that the indoor arena part of the overall plan should be built in downtown Dublin anyway, the docklands being the most obvious place. It would attract people into the area for concerts, sporting events (there’ll be an ice-hockey franchise like the one Belfast has in Dublin in a few years time) and exhibitions etc.
If you look at North America (which is at the forefront of stadia building and location), their indoor arenas are usually in downtown locations, while their stadiums are in suburban settings e.g. New York, Boston, Washington, Montreal etc, etc. The arena could be heavily financed by the private sector too, since it’ll corner the market for indoor concerts (the Point and the RDS are just warehouses after all with relatively small capacities). I think it’d provide a nice focus for the docklands redevelopment (pathetic and all as thats been so far) since the Abbey theatre won’t be moving after all.
I’ll be voting FF in this election too, mainly because of the absolute lack of anything from the opposition parties rather than anything FF have done. To say the opposition has been dire would be to understate the situation. FG are a complete joke, I saw bits of that debate on TV last night and all Baldy Noonan could do was attack the governments record, the guy doen’t seem to have any policies of his own. If he had any political cop-on he could have easily won that debate, but he hasn’t.
A National Stadium is obviously needed and the knockers don’t seem to have any alternative proposals of their own (typical FG). While FF are far from ideal, they’re the best of a bad lot, plus I think they won’t go into coalition with the anti-everything Greens which is another plus in my book.
The whole Euro 2008 bid was a bit half-assed to he honest, and while you’ll probably find that most of the rival bids are similarly half-assed, ours was particularly bad. Apart from at this end having no stadiums, the Scots are proposing to use three stadiums in Glasgow, thats like sending out a written invitation to hooligans because there’ll be several groups based around the same city.
On the issue of the National Stadium, its obvious to all that its badly needed. The Croke Park thing is a feeble cop-out used by the anti-sport lobby such as Mary Hungry and her soon to be much smaller in number shower. The only people who want to see football or Rugby at Croke Park are know-nothing politicians, the FAI and IRFU are not even interested in playing there and quite rightly so. Who wants to be the GAA’s tenant and be at the mercy of their whims?
Just look at the state of the Lansdowne pitch during the USA game, never mind the state of the rest of the stadium. A stadium on a greenfield site is preferable to rebuilding Lansdowne, because we could still play at lansdowne while its being built rather than having no option but to play our games in a different country, say Liverpool otherwise. That would be a huge embarassment to the country, even more of a national embarassment than the state of Lansdowne, or the state of Mary Harney.
ArchiCAD 7.0 for the macintosh really is the only option for power users on the Mac. I have yet to find a program as versatile, easy to use and cross platform compatible as ArchiCAD. (seamlessly handles .dwg/.dwf/.dxf/microstation, wavefront and zoom compatible. Saves in these formats as well as 3d studio, lightscape, VRML and wavefront compatible files) Its teamwork and document management systems are invaluable and if you disciple your drawing techniques you can construct true 3D buildings that allow all of the project information to be contained within one file that is parametrically linked and updated (when used correctly can save huge amounts of time drawing seperate plan/section/elevation and cut-aways for each construction phase) Its visualization tools are very easy to use and when combined with a dedicated rendering package produces stunning images on a very short timescale. http://www.graphisoft.com/products/architecture_and_design/graphisoft_archicad/
As for Letterkenny council offices: We have had Tarla as a tutor in level 5 for all of this year and he was very happy to show us around his building. Being a regular visitor to that end of the country I had watched the building rise in all its stages and been intrigued as to who, what and why? As with the McCullough Mulvin building in Dungloe, the Letterkenny building was borne out of enlightened procurement and an innate understanding of value over worth.
The main reason why Southern (and a lot of Northern) architects don’t like working in Northern Ireland (particularly working with public bodies) is the hangover of the Thatcherite era of agressive fee tendering above all else. As a consequence buildings invariably look if though they have been procured in this way, resulting in a tragic lack of quality in many of NI’s key public buildings.
“know the cost of everything and the value of nothing,” a well worn phrase up here.
Me being that member of the ‘soc.
Queen’s a wee bit unhelpful with the website so as you can see it is on my own hosting. Has proved very valuable in its first fledgling year and I intend to have a proper stab at it when I have time this summer…any advice on setting up discussion boards most welcome!
keep in touch mail@arcsoc.co.uk
