wearnicehats
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@thebig C wrote:
Devin, its the same old rubbish they always engage in. Lopping off floors plays well with the typically conservative Irish person/voter who generally don’t like anything different or daring. DCC have been doing this for years.
Naturally, its lost on councilors, council pen pushers and alot of the public that effectively cutting buildings in half destroys any architectural integrity they have. Either approve or reject them in entireity rather then trying to fit a 10 storey square peg into a 5 storey round hole!!
what exactly is the point in the consultation process? If DCC advised this developer that 5 floors would be the likely max then the developer’s a fool for lodging 8. If they didn’t, however, then DCC have led them up an ultimately very expensive path. To lose one floor may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 3 looks like carelessness (he paraphrased Earnestly)
@pdosullivan wrote:
Sorry to resurrect this thread in a Lazarus fashion, but does anyone know what’s going on at the moment? There appears to be some small-scale construction work happening on the site.
maybe it’s John Ronan personally taking the top of a few pile caps to prove the loss of his dolce vita
Belfast used to be a very attractive city. Unfortunately little or nothing of it was left standing after WWII. How lucky for Dublin that they opted out of that one.
You’ll also find that many buildings built up until the Good Friday agreement tended, for some reason, to take on a rather “defensive” design approach
in order to make a profit on a commercial venture the returns yielded by the redevelopment of a site have to exceed the cost to redevelop it. granny suck eggs I hear you cry but if you need to tie in a lot of additional sites / buildings from separate deals then the profitablity returns ratio gets effected. If a developer has to tie in other sites that are, in effect, washing their own faces financially, then the overall end picture needs to offer a substantially better yield than the development of the original single site. That’s why developers who accumulate sites tend to build retail or office developments; there simply wouldn’t be the return on a large scale hotel development on Ormond Quay
@OisinT wrote:
Still a 120 with refurb and extension isn’t so much different really. Better than a knock and replace option imo.
I believe that is more than the Morrison down the road.given the size of the existing hotel on the site (use google earth to compare the site with that of the morrison) there’s no way they could bring the existing rooms up to scratch and double the size of the building without going higher than the existing facade. I’m no fan of the scheme that was out there up until 2009 but, if they go down this route it with be an exercise in token stick-on-the-existing-facadism which does less to merit the quays that a knock-job. If you consider that, in reality, there’s also no way that a viable commercial development could be contained within the height profile of the existing hotel then it’s inevitably going to attract a proposal that is going to ABP (if the hotel can stand up that long)
@OisinT wrote:
Apparently with refurbishment it can have 160 rooms which isn’t too bad. The hotel itself is apparently for sale at the moment for €7million (and it didn’t sell, so it could probably be had for less).
I’d like to see it done up rather than demolished personally.not sure where you get that from – the original hotel had 64 shabby, non-Bord F standard rooms and wasn’t viable as a hotel in the longterm. The 160 room option was knock and replace. The article below stated 120 with refurb and extension
Interestingly BM had it up for sale for €11m in 2008. Bet he wished he’d taken that now….
http://www.tribune.ie/business/article/2008/jul/20/mcgettigan-tipped-to-buy-ormond-hotel-in-dublin/
also discussed here
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3440&highlight=farewell+ormond+hotel
@Devin wrote:
The good news is permission for its demolition has expired (it was granted permission on appeal in September 2004 and so expired five years later – last September – thus avoiding the new, CIF-prompted rule where developers can extend permissions without reapplying, which came into force this January). Appeal Ref. is PL29N.207208. The bad news is, well, I don’t have to tell you what the bad news is.
Here is a picture of part of it in the early noughties when it was nicely painted and had timber sash windows and was open as hotel …… before the owner tastelessly painted it white, filled it with PVC windows, got permission for its demolition, closed it up and basically let it sit there like a piece of shit.
I don’t really see how it’s good news that the permission has expired. No-one will reopen it as a hotel as it is. it might be good for a refurb and major extension but nothing will happen without another major planning application, AFT objection and appeal, ABP prevarication, another ABP grant with conditions. Unless NAMA do something or someone buys it the current owner is not in a position to do anything so it will continue to sit there “like a piece of shit” until it falls down anyway. It sits as a rotten tooth in the mouth of the hippopotamus of bureaucrazy (sic)
Friday’s IT
THREE GROUPS of architects, comprising mainly Irish practices, have been chosen to go on to the final stage of the competition to redesign the ESB’s headquarters on Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin.
The practices come in groups because the competition for the office redesign only allowed entries from practices that had a fee income of at least €2.5 million a year which, at the time, narrowed the field to about six architectural firms in Ireland.
The three winning consortiums are Grafton Architects, O’Mahony Pike, DEGW and BDSP; Henry J Lyons and Gilroy McMahon; and Scott Tallon Walker, the last being the only single practice in the final three. The competition attracted 44 entries across the world.
The ESB’s attempts over the years to upgrade its headquarters have often caused sparks and this time is no different. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) complained to the European Commission over the restrictive conditions set for the competition. The then president of the RIAI, Seán Ó Laoire, met the ESB to discuss the issue on behalf of all architectural practices: his practice, Murray Ó Laoire, has since gone into liquidation.
The ESB’s redevelopment of its offices on Fitzwilliam Street in 1970 led to the demolition of 16 Georgian houses and the company says the latest redevelopment will not affect the Georgian houses it owns on the Mount Street side of its 2.5 acre site. It also requested that the new scheme respect its Georgian surroundings.
The company’s offices comprise different buildings and at the launch of the contest for the new headquarters in April 2009 the ESB asked designers to assume that existing buildings would be demolished.
It also asked for a solution to the controversial Lower Fitzwilliam Street facade, designed by Stephenson Gibney Architects. Some argue, however, that the facade is a good scale and shows respect for the older buildings nearby. The ESB could therefore find itself faced with a lobby to retain the 1970s frontage.
A spokeswoman for the ESB said EU procurement rules meant they could not discuss the three final-stage designs – and none of the practices have posted them on their websites.
Key practices in the consortiums have weathered the recession well. Scott Tallon Walker is working on the Lansdowne Road stadium (with international practice Populous); Henry J Lyons has just finished the Criminal Court in Dublin; Gilroy McMahon is due to redevelop Liberty Hall and Grafton Architects recently won a competition to design a building for the University of Toulouse
suggests local knowledge of a sensitive site won through?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0329/1224267278845.html
COLM KEENA Public Affairs Correspondent
A WEALTHY individual has approached the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA)with a view to “taking over†the CHQ or Stack A building, according to a group that would prefer to see the building host a science museum.
Seana Kevany, a member of the Discovery group which has been campaigning for the establishment of a science museum at the building, said she and others were told this when they met the authority’s chief executive, Gerry Kelly, on Friday last.
Ms Kevany said they were told the idea would be brought to the board on May 10th, but that Mr Kelly would not say who the individual was, or what he wanted to do with the building.
The building was restored at a cost of approximately €30 million and opened as a retail centre in 2006. It is understood to be losing money and the authority is known to be looking at alternative uses.
Discovery wants half the building to be given over to a science museum. The establishment of a museum has long been a policy objective of the authority, though one that has never been achieved. Leases in the docklands provide for a levy that would fund a museum and that would come into effect once one was opened.
An authority spokesman said it remains “committed to CHQ as a retail outlet. We are working with the tenants in the building to make it as successful as possible.â€
Meanwhile, Fine Gael TD Phil Hogan yesterday released documents showing former DDDA chief executive Paul Maloney writing to Mary Moylan, a civil servant with the Department of the Environment and a director of the DDDA, on October 2nd, 2006, seeking to have a €127 million borrowing facility put in place, following a decision of the authority.
The move was related to the authority’s subsequent disastrous purchase of the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, in a joint venture with developers Bernard McNamara and Derek Quinlan.
Minutes of a board meeting of the following day, show Mr Maloney raising the issue for the first time with the board, with Ms Moylan attending the meeting.
A source said such matters are often progressed in parallel informal and formal processes, and this could explain the dates
the cameraman was probably standing up as far back as possible – it appears that the pitch will be visible ok but there’s going to be an issue with seeing goal kicks
the comparison with the photo of croker in post #478 is pretty stark though
@foremanjoe wrote:
The stadium holds 82,500 people in its present condition, what more do you want?
put seats on the terrace permanently perhaps – lower capacity but a lot more comfort?
had you turned round you could have photographed slightly diappointed looking tourists winding their way around junkies to peruse a succession of little kiosks selling anything from live birds to hardcore pornography. dicing with death you can cross the traffic to reach any number of uninspiring little shops. my rather dull morning was livened up by watching 2 traffic policemen beat the living crap out of a drug dealer on the pavement
The Ramblas is a triumph of hype over substance. That said – from the above description it could be twinned with O’Connell Street. All we need now is zero tolerance
it kind of looks like that, at some stage in the design process, the site location fell between two stools
@Cathal Dunne wrote:
That’s a fabulous picture up the stairwell. It’s really striking. Between this, the new Point, the Grand Canal Square and other things, perhaps the Celtic Tiger years weren’t completely wasted, architecturally speaking.
maybe we could print the photo reallllly big, put it on a banner and then drape it over the bland brutal jarring vomitorium of an external envelope
another good thing about this bridge is that, if you are southside and stand in the right place, it almost totally obliterates that utter abject mind bogglingly awful conference centre.
@Frank Taylor wrote:
Dublin City Council voted on Monday night to allow cars to drive through college green during the evening rush hour for two months from mid nov to mid jan. They also voted to allow free on street parking in 1380 spaces after 2pm in the city centre. The city manager stated in his report that he could find no evidence that the bus gate had been the cause of a reduction in sales in the city centre shops.
So there you have it: Dublin City Council’s plan to encourage people into Dublin is to transfer road space from public transport to cars and to stop charging for parking spaces that were previously filled by fee paying drivers.
In previous years there was an acknowledgement that the roads could not take the Christmas rush and that people were to be encouraged to use public transport during the busy season with temporary P&R facilities created. There was also an acceptance that charging for parking led to a higher turnover of spaces and availability of parking for those willing to pay. The alternative is that the spaces fill with people abandoning their cars for 10 hours+ while they work an evening shift or hang out in their mates apartments. The streets fill with cars cruising around for free spaces.
I’m very disappointed with the council. Motion was carried 35 to 11. Mostly it was supported by FG/Labour and opposed by FF (surprisingly) and some labour reps and independents like Mannix Flynn. The council seems to have caved in following legal threats from car park owners, an unproven fear that some of their larger ratepayers were losing money and pressure on Labour from their Union paymasters, representing staff in Brown Thomas.
I think if DCC really wanted to help Dublin shoppers this christmas they would allow free on street parking in 1380 spaces somewhere in the vicinity of Newry
@Blisterman wrote:
Can’t be much worse than Stamford Bridge.
This was the view I got when I went to a match there, in a season ticket seat as well.
I can confirm that the view is the almost the same in the season tickets position on the side of the pitch too. You can just about see the far touchline
