jungle
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The location is good being close to rail and road links. The site doesn’t have the problems with lack of public transport access that some do; nor is it too far removed from the national road network (i.e. not the nightmare of snarl-ups in Ballintemple if they used the site near Pairc Ui Chaoimh).
Two acres sounds a little small to me. Fine for gigs and the like, but it won’t be attracting in significant international trade shows etc. at that size.
Where exactly is the site? And do we lose any significant buildings if it gets developed?
And slowly the process continues.
http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/changes-agreed-to-citys-docklands-strategy-102639.html
I hope to see the docklands redeveloped in my lifetime.
Plenty more to come.
This should keep them busy til 2020.
“The minister has announced plans to make funding available for Kilbarry station”
“The minister has asked the cabinet to make funding available for Kilbarry station”
“The minister has made funding available for Kilbarry station”
“Work has commenced on Kilbarry station”
“The minister has visited the soon-to-be-completed Kilbarry station”
“The minister has opened Kilbarry station”
“The minister has announced plans to make funding available for Blarney station”
“The minister has asked the cabinet to make funding available for Blarney station”
“The minister has made funding available for Blarney station”
“Work has commenced on Blarney station”
“The minister has visited the soon-to-be-completed Blarney station”
“The minister has opened Blarney station”
“The minister has announced plans to make funding available for Dunkettle station”
“The minister has asked the cabinet to make funding available for Dunkettle station”
“The minister has made funding available for Dunkettle station”
“Work has commenced on Dunkettle station”
“The minister has visited the soon-to-be-completed Dunkettle station”
“The minister has opened Dunkettle station”So the railway line to Midleton is finally open.
Anyone planning to use it soon? Anyone planning to be a regular commuter?
Odlums are closing their premises on Kennedy Quay.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0702/odlums.html
While, it’s obviously unfortunate for the workers involved, this needs to be a wake up call for the council. This is probably the Docklands building most worth preserving.
There is a gap in the market in Cork for a proper aparthotel complex. But the fit-out inside the Elysian is way above what you get in the standard aparthotel. They’d have to charge ridiculously high amounts and would probably end up pricing themselves out of any potential market.
I was passing yesterday and noticed a planning permission application had gone on the old Cork Warehouse Company site (the last part of the Elysian block that’s still undeveloped)
So here’s the application from the Corporation Website
The demolition of the building known as the Cork Warehouse Co Ltd at the corner of Albert Street and Albert Quay and the construction of a mixed use office development with ground floor retail area. The proposed development has a height of 7 no storeys with an additional 2 no storey set back fronting the junction of Albert St and Albert Quay. The proposed development includes 2no levels of basement car parking for 87 no vehicles accessed from Albert Street, ESB switch room, plant room, roof top plant area and hard and soft landscaping. The site is bound to the north by Albert Quay, to the south by Port Lane, to the east by Albert Street and adjoins a disused commercial building to the west. The overall development comprises of 13,462.27 sqm GFA of office space and 2no ground floor retails units totalling 846.59 sqm GFA. The proposed development requires a waste licence for the disposal of excavated soil off site.
But the type of office space that who_me and I can’t find isn’t the sort that Google would need.
In our case, we need about 300 square metres for our current usage, but would be looking for closer to 500 to allow for planned future expansion.
There is an incredible lack of office space of that kind around the city centre considering we’re at the end of a boom where we’re supposed to have built too much property.
I guess the market wasn’t as profitable as housing a few years ago, but it seems to be a lot more robust now. There aren’t many vacant new offices around the city centre.
The Elysian only had three offices built into it. One has already gone to ACC. The others are too small and also command a premium for street frontage that we don’t particularly need.
Actually, office space could still be a goer.
Although Cork has a glut of commercial space, there’s a serious lack of good quality modern office space near the city centre (Believe me, we’re in the process of looking!). Plenty out in Mahon, Little Island or up at the airport, but not in the city centre itself.
It looks awful as you approach it coming down Albert Rd.
But then, that’s the low-rise part you see there.
You’re right that the tower element has almost no negative effect on any city perspective.
There is a local area plan under preparation for the airport. Submissions can be made until the 21st of January. As we all seem fairly concerned and informed about the future of the airport, I think it would be desirable if as many people from here as possible made submissions
Did anyone else go in for the open day on Monday?
I have to admit I was surprised by how small the penthouse apartments were. I guess for the price they were asking, I was expecting something a bit bigger.
You can’t improve the pedestrian links without taking up some space from the road. Lapp’s Quay should be fairly uncontroversial as nobody uses it as a through road anyway.
If you look at Clontarf St, nobody uses the right hand lane. It would end up with you doing circuits of Parnell Place and Lower Oliver Plunkett St – great for kerb crawlers, but not that useful for the vast majority of citizens. Having two lanes on Clontarf St, one for turning left at the end and one for turning right would suffice. You’ve also got to take into account that there are only two lanes leading into it from Clontarf Bridge (the rightmost lane is for Merchant’s Quay traffic only), so it will never require the volume provided by three lanes. Finally, if you think where traffic is coming from and going to,
Eglinton St may be a different issue with the City Hall car park and the entrance to the Elysian car park in addition to standard traffic flows. But, it’s not as critical as the others anyway.
To be honest, we need to get away from the amount of parking space and road space given over to cars in Cork city centre. After the building of the South Ring, it should have become more about a space for people to live, work and socialise in and less about getting cars through. The only cars that need to drive through the city centre are ones that have it as their destination or that are travelling from the Northside to the Southside of the city and vice versa.
The Dublin Metro is actually PPP, so it doesn’t cost the DoF any money in the short term. The whole PPP scheme is a bit of a scam though, because it’s a way of borrowing without it appearing on the balance sheet. And we’re all seeing what keeping liabilities of your balance sheet can do at the moment.
If the Docklands is to be integrated into the city centre, there will be a lot of work needed on making the streets in between more pedestrian friendly. Clontarf St and Eglinton St don’t need to be 3 lane, so 2 lane with better footpaths will do. Lapp’s Quay (the bit outside Connolly Hall, not outside the Clarion) needs upgrading with most of the parking removed. Albert Quay also needs a good bit of work done; possibly a lane could bre removed, but more important would be cleaning up the quayside area. I’m not sure much could be done about Albert St (which accounts for most of the retail space in the Elysian); it’s a very important traffic artery and there isn’t much spare space going around.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the new or proposed denser developments iin Cork are along what is perceived as a potential light rail route.Jacob’s Island, Eden, South Docklands, Victoria Cross etc.
I would also be sceptical about the business case for light rail to Carrigaline. If you could throw in Ringaskiddy as well, it might make more sense. Perhaps even a line that went Ringaskiddy, Carrigalin, Airport, Cork. But with the required tunnelling, embankments etc. that would probably be prohibitively expensive.
In some ways it’s a pity that conversion of the Midleton and Cobh lines to light rail wasn’t considered. I guess they were always kept as heavy rail because of the need to get goods trains to North Esk and Marino Point, but both those issue are gone now. Even so, some form of Karlruhe Model could have allowed light and heavy rail to share the lines and then have the light rail vehicles switch on to on-street running in the city. Also with the Karlsruhe model, you’d be OK to have heavy rail trains do Mallow-Cobh journeys etc.
But that’s water under the bridge now.. We should perhaps be glad that the Midleton line is getting built. I was out in the Glounethaune/Carrigtwohill direction over the weekend and work seem to be progressing nicely. That said, they’ve replaced the old skew bridge over the former Cork-Waterford road wit a new one that firstly doesn’t eliminate the skew (i.e. is still dangerous for road traffic) and which to my untrained eye seems incapable of having two lines pass underneath it. I know Midleton is initially being rebuilt as single track (OK because you can still manage a train every 15 minutes if necessary), but I was under the impression that all the bridges were to be built to allow double-tracks to be installed later if the situation arose.
It’s not about drivers needs. The drivers have a legal maximum number of hours and anyway most drivers would willingly take the overtime payments. There just aren’t enough drivers.
At the moment, they don’t have enough drivers to operate the service they’re supposed to run on a Sunday, so any match specials are completely out of the question.
