GMiley
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Thanks for the comments on the proopsals for Georgian Limerick. I actually did a masters degree on the whole idea of ‘how to successfullly manage an Architectural Conservation Area without sucking the life out of it’ at UCD ten years ago. It was before the 1999 Bill was published and my concern at the time was that, unless carefully managed, there was a danger that legislating to conserve buildings could actually make things worse. As it happens (and I not usually one to say ‘I told you so’) I was right. Especially about Limerick.
I have to stress as well that I’m no genius. Most of the ideas I was pushing in my thesis (repeated in the Dispatch) are just rehashed versions of the systems applied in New York, Boston and parts of Germany.
Regarding the Charlotte’s Quay car park, I don’t know where to begin. To understand how these things happen, you have to spend some time working within the local authority system to discover how ‘unjoined’ up everything is. And how chronically political. There are some very well meaning people in these places, but eventually they get ground down…
I can’t see any worthwhile solution for the Charlotte’s Quay site which doesn’t first involve demolishing the car park. Not as radical as it first sounds. Notwithstanding the penthouse additions, carparks are not highly serviced buildlings – easy to build, easy to pull down. No doubt some ultra Green people will complain about the ’embodied energy’, etc. but I’m sure we can buy oen of these carbon off-et thingies.
Btw, this is an absolutely fantastic forum. How come the contributors to this debate are not actually making the decisions for how Limerick should be developed? An argument for directly elected mayors with executive function and politically appointed cabinet if ever there was one.
Garry
Hi Lads, I’m new to the discussion on what’s been going on in Limerick but I’m a mad keen fan on the city and thought I’d add my tuppence worth to the Charlotte’s Quay situation you’ve been talking about a bit.
I seen to remember that the planning application for the car park which forms the ‘core’ of the site in question received planning approval in late 1999. I was working in the architect’s dept of Limerick City Council at the time and when the application was put on my desk for comment I instinctively reacted thinking that the proposal represented a lost oportunity for one of the most important sites in the city. I drew up an alternative proposal for the entire site which (I’m symplifying now) would include developing a small plaza roughly where the car park now stands served by a network of small streets which would attempt to stitch the site fabric back into the existing layout of Charlotte’s Quay, Broad Street, etc.
Following discussions with my seniors, I prepared some presentationn drawings of what I had in mind and was instructed to call the applicants into City Hall for a meeting to see if we could get them to reconsider their approach.
The meeting was held on, I think, Christmas Eve. Naturally, my senior colleagues made last minute excuses and I was left to meet the applicant his architects/engineers/legal advisors, etc., on my own.
Anyway, I made the pitch as best I could. I showed them my few sketches and told them that this was the way we, in the Council, pictured the future direction of the site taking. I hoped, I said, they might take these suggestions on board before their application was too far advanced.
At which stage I was curtly interrupted. Didn’t I realise, the client wanted to know, that planning permission had already been granted for his car park days before our meeting and that the bulldozers were already on the site?
Of course, nobody had bothered to mention a word of it to me.
On another note, I have been hustling a proposal for how to get more activity going in the Georgian area of Limerick, a place I’m really passionate about. If you’re interested, you might go to my website – the Planning Dispatch – which you’ll find at http://www.garrymiley.com . I think it’s Dispatch No 11 which you’ll find in the archive section. You might take the time to read the experiences of some the people who’ve been trying to renovate buildings on the RPS in the area and the level of crap they have to put up with.
Cheers.
Garry
