Frank Taylor
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Smithfield is unrecognisable now from the way it was 10 yaers ago. Is this not the result of tax relief and the Luas?
Private cash was invested in the area that otherwise might have gone abroad. Had the reliefs not been available, the individuals might have found other ways to rearrange their tax affairs to pay less.
Whether it is worth keeping these incentives now is another question. The tax incentives raise the price of property in the area, so investors end up overpaying compared to similar property in a non-incentive area.
The real winner is someone like Duffy’s scrapyard that owned the development land before the tax status was announced.
Just to return to the comparison of O’Connell Street with the Champs-Elysées. I previously posted images of this Avenue covered with wheat which was then harvested, with the dramatic backdrop of the Arc. This kind of exercise is great for the imagination, allowing us to see the space on the street in another context freed from the choking effect of motorised transport.
Anyhow, the French have been at it again, this time dressing up the Avenue to draw attention to their olympic bid. It would be great if we could close off O’Connell Street once in a while on a Sunday and hvae big street parties like this.
Have you managed to get a face to face meeting with any planners? I understand that you are entitled to at least this much. You need to listen to their concerns and address them. As I’m sure you know, the sales-cycle is often longer than expected for a new product. You could also try the dept of the environment and its minister.
Shroud advertising in Ireland is often hung from buildings by companies who know it’s illegal but understand the benefit outweighs the punishment. These ads have become giant symbols of blatant corporate irresponsibility and ineffectual local government.
This is sad because the legitimate use of ads to cover construction sites is a good thing. Will your company decide to accept business from companies who wish to break the law?
That has house has been levelled. The land was just too valuable. The esso site across the road sold for close to 8million per acre.
For an example of a small cafe-bar operating within the current licensing laws, try CYO on Camden Street. It seats about 20 and sells wines and bottled beers and even weiss beer on draft along with tapas style food. You can fill the whole place for an evening with a small circle of friends.
@A-ha wrote:
Glad to hear that the Cork-Dublin “motorway” is getting built piece by piece. At least it should cut down the time spent on the road.
There is an argument that the traffic levels between most Irish cities don’t justify 2 lane motorway. instead, we could have bypassed every town on the way and used a 2+1 passing lane road, as seen in Australia and Sweden. 10 years ago, any Irish person driving in France or the UK would feel slightly embarrassed and think, ‘Why can’t we have a network of motorways?’ The NRA has spent 17 billion over the last 10 years to achieve this end. Maybe we could have spent this more wisely.
It might have been an idea not to continue the radial structure of roads and rail emanating from a congested Dublin Ring motorway. Rather than upgrading Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Waterford and Dublin-Limerick, we could have upgraded Dublin-Waterford-Cork-Limerick-Dublin. Journey times would not have been greatly increased compared to the direct routes. The Swiss, aided by geography, have managed to build a balanced infrastructure that has allowed the development of at least four decent cities. France, by contrast, looks much more radial. These patterns reflect their respective degrees of government centralisation.
@A-ha wrote:
Has the motorway linking Cork and Limerick to Dublin been given some sort of green light or is it still some urban myth?
Approval has been given to build a collection of road segments and upgrades that, once strung together will form a road of at least dual carriageway standard between Dublin and Cork by 2010. A lot of it is built already or under construction.
Also, isn’t the bypass in Fermoy a motorway? I haven’t seen it yet, but I thought I heard it was.
Yes it is 17.5 km of tolled motorway, due to finish by summer 2007.
We were better off in the 1950’s when almost every town in Ireland was connected to a railway line, since then all of these stations have been dwindling away.
We were of course much worse off in every other way. The extensive rail network only existed because there was no competition from cars. Had we maintained the rail network we would have spent the last 40 years running trains that nobody used at huge expense. Rail infrastructure only lasts about 30-40 years so we would have had to renew the network by now anyway.
Increased employment and car congestion have made commuter rail systems a welcome prospect in Ireland. Watch the price of property along the MIdleton line shoot up over the next few years.
My biggest disappointment is that we only have one railway provider, compared to countries such as England and Germany where they have 5 or 6 companies operating trains. What does everyone else think??
It didn’t seem to work out so sweetly for the Brits. Ireland’s rail network may be too small to generate any interest in competition. However, allowing Connex to run the luas seems to have been a good idea. Their ticketing is about a million times better than the DART and Irish Rail have something to live up to now.
This is an example of bad pastiche: wrong period, poor execution, clearly mismatched windows and floor levels. this is hardly an argument against pastiche, just an argument against doing things badly. In our brains the concepts of ‘copy’ and ‘imitation’ are closely linked with ‘cheap’ and ‘pale’. Other words like ‘forgery’, ‘ripoff’ and ‘counterfeit’ inhabit the same neural nieghbourhood.
What if the developer had specified a very good continuation of the original buildings, the diference only discernible to the expert eye, or easily discernible but pleasing nonetheless? What if there were no deceit in this extension, if the year of construction, 2005, were clearly engraved on a keystone?
In this case, it looks like the commercial imperative to squeeze in two extra floors was stronger than the local planning guidelines.
A single storey form should be used
What is the logic behind this guideline? Why is the world a better place when everyone lives in a bungalow? Is this demented egalitarianism?
Street sign clutter in rural areas was a top story on BBC news this morning. They showed a bend in the road, that was marked by 20 signs each with yellow backgrounds. Here’s a link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/04/nclut04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/04/ixhome.html
I was surprised but pleased that this was newsworthy.
On the subject of street furniture clutter in Dublin and College Green, here’s a 3d viz of Dame Street without street furniture.
