urbanisto
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O’Connell Street has fared better than expected through the recession given it recent history. Apart from the obvious Chartered Land site, vacancy is low on the street and standards have remained relatively high. It’s worth noting a few changes on the street recently and some planning permissions.
The terrace of four Georgian houses on Bachelors Walk for an iconic view onto the street but you would never think of it given their poor condition and hotchpotch of gaudy colours.
Permission has just been granted by Dublin City Council for a restoration of the original granite shopfront to No 32 (which was last known as Candy) and it will be very interesting to see such an ambitious proposal executed. I wonder at it…to be honest it seems worthy but wrong and I am not sure it will make for the attractive modern shop or restaurant that this site needs.
Next door, permission was sought to restore the upper floors of 33-34 Bachelors Walk wrapping around to 56 Lower O’Connell Street. This proposal includes the very welcome removal of all the shit signage, girders and utilities etc that has accumulated on this front for much of the past 100 years. A cafe at ground floor (already in place) and continued use in upper floors. Trouble is they want to then stick a 10x5m corner LED advertisement onto the front to replace the Nokia sign etc.
A split decision has been given by the PA with permission for the restoration works but refusal for the new advertising. It’s quite bizarre that they even thought it would be acceptable. It looked awful! What are people thinking in this city.
So with no advertisement revenue to be had I imagine the applicant will shy away from
refurbishing the upper floors. The trouble is that there is enforcement action against the Nokia signs and they are likely to have to do something.Opposite 56 is the former Irish Nationwide head office which has been vacant for a couple of years. There is now a (quite smart) currency exchange shop in place. Can I just ask…who uses these anymore?
Supermacs is still an disaster begging for an interested planning enforcement officer. They just can’t stop adding. The Westmoreland Street one is even worse and now Supermacs have opened in Temple Bar.
[/URL]Next we come to Chartered Land site. Getting grubbier by the day (as I mentioned elsewhere re Moore Street). Littered with site notices, nobody is cleaning windows…all the upper floors are empty. Today a new Chinese restaurant was installing brash signage to the front of the former Fingal offices…10 Thousands Restaurant. I rushed for the laptop thinking this must be unauthorised. But no, it got permission earlier this year. A temporary 3-year permission. I suppose little else is going to happen to this site for a while yet.
For those interested, further information on the proposed memorial has now been submitted to Dublin City Council – ref WEB1196/12
@thebig C wrote:
I actually like the renders and I feel this project would provide and interesting backdrop and alternative entrance to the Garden of Rememberance, as opposed to the tangle of groth that currently envelopes this part of the site. However, I am allways instinctively dubious about developments which are “fitted in” , as the constraints of the site compromise the design.
I would be equally unsympathetic about some of the objectors though, somehow I suspect Mannix Flynn is part of the Anti-everything brigade.
C
darcspace on North Great Georges Street are hosting an exhibition of all the entries for the memorial from Thursday this week. That should be interesting.
I think Mannix views on whether it is appropriate to link a memorial for one thing into a memorial for another are quite relevant actually. I think he is raising a legitimate issue…maybe not a planning issue, maybe more an issue at the time of commissioning and site selection but sure who thinks of these things then.
My biggest concern with the proposed memorial is the wisdom of sticking an open tunnel like structure into the site…its a red flag to people using the place as a toilet or sleeping rough. So a gate will almost certainly be added. The next question then is how often it is opened? Is this going to be like the 1988 Millennium Garden on Christchurch Place…nice to look into.
@arachne wrote:
Those cuboid three-storey pillars are hideous, as is that ridiculous cylindrical billboard that says ‘Cad é an scéal?’. They are to this architectural era what Hawkins House was to the 60s.
I think that the images shown on Friday are only preliminary suggestions. I dont think it represents the end design.
Now that the froth of Friday has subsided, what do we all think of the proposal. Ali Grehan suggested it would be the most important investment in the north city for 100 years. Not quite that, but it is a huge impetus to the improvement of Parnell Square and the surrounding streets. Its a lot of money though…€60m just for one development. Its worth noting that the 2005 Framework Plan for the Square planned to spend about €12 if I remember rightly. That plan soon died (as these plans all too often do in Dublin) once it came against the quangoed might of the RPA and their interminable planning for Metro North and Luas BXD.
I think the proposal to move the Library here makes a great deal of sense. I think it will cluster a group of cultural institutions together to their overall benefit. I like the idea of pedestrianising the north side of the Square and finally improving the quality of the public realm on the Square, which is dismal and incoherent. I have a feeling what will emerge from the City Architects will be a contemporary, chinese granite and ‘funky’ lighting proposal for the square. I think you can reimagine the space and still reinforce its historic character. I wonder what will happen to the Dublin Bus mini-depot that is Granby Row/West Parnell Square. Where will all de buses go if suddenly people decide they want to use more roadspace.
How about the Colaiste Mhuire buildings. Does the theatre to the rear have any architectural merit. Might that upset the planning process?
The project is undoubtedly a coup for the City Architects over the usual originators of projects within the Council. Ali Grehan was making the most of it on Friday and fair play…it is a forward looking proposal for the city. The next question is who will design the building? Looking at the Cork Hill fiasco I am not sure I would like to trust this to DCC. And looking at the state of Dublin Castle at present, I am not sure I would trust OPW. So perhaps it will be go out to a firm. I think that would be a good outcome – and a nice little earner for someone by the looks of it.
Still thinking of whether €60m is a justifiable cost?
Wasn’t it all meant to be so different…
Dublin City Council Retail Core: the City Centre Retail Plan
The effects of the stalled Chartered Land project are also starting to show on the section of Henry Street from Moore Street to Henry Place/Lane? Remember this is still one of the two premier retail streets in the city and country, so could Dublin City Council at least humour the public that it cares about its condition. The quality of shopfronts and upper floors is deteriorating dreadfully and the standard of retailer is racing southward…hardly reflective of the prime retail core. The stretch is littered with site notices and the like from the planning permission stage (these are supposed to be removed within a set time) and everything is just dirty and grubby. No one seems to care….least of all NAMA it seems which I understand essentially controls the site together with Joe O’Reilly’s loanbook. The usual Irish mentality that if you let the building deteriorate so far then everyone will welcome anything you choose to do simply to see the place cleaned up.
A walk around the corner onto Moore Street makes one wonder whether they had arrived in downtown Lagos. There is simply no control whatsoever of standards along this street… Sure its lively and ethnically diverse etc, etc but does that mean it needs to be a kip? And you’re supposed to buy food here? Dublin’s authentic street market? Can we have some standards in this city? Cant we aspire to just a little more than mediocrity and making-do?
Quality businesses vie with fleapits and health hazards and we celebrate this as something worth experiencing! Its astonishing to me.
I’m sorry if I am perceived as being racially insensitive here but I just feel that there is one set of rules (rarely enforced now) for Irish property owners that simply don’t apply to ethnic businesses in many cases….whether the excuse is that the owners cannot be identified or that the staff don’t speak English at the first sight of bureaucracy I don’t know….but the Council and other agencies seem oblivious to the gulf in quality between many shall we say ‘Irish’ and ‘New Irish’ businesses.
Of course any hope at all for standards of shopfront, business interior, quality retailing on prime retail streets, mix and diversity of retail have all gone out the window in Dublin. The Council just aren’t interested. Mediocre thinking controls policy making in City Council…lowest common denominator applies. And most shop-owners or building owners just dont care any longer…its all about the bottom line and if a couple of hundred quids worth of plastic signage and a dollop of lurid pink paint with get me noticed then who gives a fuck. To rally against it is only to make oneself world-weary and depressed.
Wonder how the proposed memorial fits in…
Course it would be nice to see the Plan on the Council’s website the same day that it is launched. Seems everyone was none the wiser about the story breaking today. The City Architect never even mentioned it at last night’s opening of Central Bank in the 21st Century…despite the fact that a number of those entries suggested a Library for the former bank….including the winning design! Perhaps the City Architect wasnt in the loop…this is Dublin City Council after all.
HOWEVER! The Plan sounds like a great opportunity for the Square and I fervently hope that their is a programme of action behind it to realised its objectives…unlike its 2005 forebearer.
I look forward to reading it.
So is a search engine.
To be honest this whole story is a joke. The buildings are in bits and are a disgrace. I bumped into a group called http://www.1916museum.ie a few weeks back who told me that they had a lease on the building from CL and were now seeking funding (as ever) to realise a museum. Lots of slick branding and flat Dublin accents (a la trade unionists) telling me about the value of the building to the city and the State. However when I asked the quite logical question as to why a group that cared so much and held a lease couldn’t even be bothered to clean up the front (and I mean just remove raggy bunting and that all that shit plastic signage), he couldn’t even humour me with an intelligent response…..oh look there’s some I know over there far far away from you.
Perhaps there is a great story to tell here but the problem is interminable and intractable and the building is a bloody disgrace (like its host street). Aul Dublin….its with O’Leary in the grave.
Well, welldone Faddyfish. A small victory for aesthetics. I had noticed the signage at both College Green and Grafton Street taken down recently and to be just as fair there does seem to have been an effort made to tackle the near saturation of brown finger signs advertising the ‘National’ Wax Museum and the ‘National’ Leprechaun Museum.
As you rightly point out there are lots still about and the deal was (and the orders came all the way from the top of Irish Water) that the old signage would be removed by Roads following the roll out of the wayfinder. Aah sure we will get there in the end.
There is still in my view a huge deal of clutter in College Green. The newest eyesores about the city are the skeletal frames of former Smart phoneboxes which now litter many streets. I wonder was a bond taken by DCC at their installation to fund their ultimate removal. Perhaps this is work programmed in for the coming few months.
Little effort made to remove the empty signage poles that litter the place…including College Green. That is really a bridge too far.
The latest Dublin Civic Trust study focuses on Aungier Street. The study has been co-written with Dublin City Council Conservation Office and should b published shortly. A lead-up to the report features here http://www.dublinpeople.com/article.php?utm_medium=referral&id=2061&utm_source=t.co&l=100
A great image of the street. Its amazing how its character has dramatically changed today. I would like to see the canopy removed. I think it would give the building a much more impressive front.
Actually the Spar on Dame Street is on the site of the coiffeurs that Countess Markievitz used to get a rinse and set the day before the Rising…so actually you may be in to something Graham.
I agree that the use of this as a flagship cultural project to commemorate 1916 is a bit of a stretch. The revelations by the National Museum of Ireland as to the fate of that museums Court of Casts over the 20th century (1920 – 1970) by our republican ideals is still fresh in my mind. At a lecture on Sat last, ostensibly to educate the masses on the incredible decorative features of the NMI, the lecturer informed us all that most of the casts (exact replicas of various architectural masterpieces across Europe) were smashed up by UCD students in the 1960s to protest at Govt reorganisation of third level.
The republic sadly retains an enormous legacy of cultural vandalism from its first 100yrs.
Perhaps this great project will address that to some measure.
I must eat my words of above. A welcome investment of €20m and a timeframe for completion by end of 2015.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0124/breaking32.html
One of those classical images of College Green doing the rounds on social media yesterday. Its funny to read the following comments of the great unwashed. So many thinking College Green comprise manicured green lawns.
http://www.thejournal.ie/archive-pic-of-the-day-college-green-765885-Jan2013/
(sorry cant be bothered with the whole PhotoBucket things to insert the image)
I saw this too on Twitter a few days back. Shocking picture to use and really unfortunate for the powers that be who like to present that I need to go I need to get away from everything’ view of the city. But you make a valid point of course.
What about that classic view of the Ha’penny Bridge…with that monstrous canopy over the door. Its been brought to the attention of so many city officials but none of them care to be frank.
Or think of The Dubline…Dublin’s emerging high quality tourist trail. Look at Dame Street. A parade of takeaways and pubs at this stage. I see a Subway going into the Londis close to College Green…the handy way of getting a fastfood operator in without needing to fuss about with planning permission. Elsewhere on the street kebabs, chinese buffets, chipshops, dubious burger bars, etc abound. You would be hard pushed to find an actual shop. I imagine the next step is less and less daytimes uses as nighttime becomes more lucrative.
All this along what should be one of the city’s premier streets.Remember this?
Well its now this…
Its a piss-poor paint job that unfortunately doesnt do any justice to the lovely detailing on this frontage. However at least the epileptic fits have stopped along this part of the quays.
A request for further information was made on 14th Dec for this development. http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=WEB1196/12&theTabNo=2&backURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1837161%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E%20%3E%20%3Ca%20href=’wphappsearchres.displayResultsURL?ResultID=2263531%26StartIndex=1%26SortOrder=APNID:asc%26DispResultsAs=WPHAPPSEARCHRES%26BackURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1837161%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E’%3ESearch%20Results%3C/a%3E
