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Tall Buildings and development in Waterford
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26-05-2006 11:06amOkay, lets get straight to the point.
I am in favour of tall buildings in Waterford. I am horrified that the Waterford of 1900 was higher rise and more impressive and more consistent than the Waterford of today. (notwithstanding new high buildings which have recently sprung up often amid a furore of criticism)
Looking at old pictures of Waterford shows that the city boasted many large, impressive structures. The Imperial Hotel and the Hotel beside it (now the Tower hotel) seems to have been one floor higher. A massive jail stood on Ballybricken hill, just as the Infirmary and De La Salle College still stand on hills. Adelphi Quay, which was still a quay was high rise and had large buildings along it.
The Quay, which now resembles a row of broken teeth, use to be almost uniform in height, until older buildings were demolished in the 20th century and replaced with structures of lesser height. (e.g. shaws) This has happened elsewhere in the city as well. The result is ugly, inconsistent and completely unsuitable for modern purposes -- or for 1800's Georgian purposes for that matter! These ugly mistakes can no longer be demolished because of McCann and his ilk.
The list of old buildings that could not now be built is long: the Infirmary, the De La Salle College, the Granary/Museum of Treasures, and so on: we have enumerated them already on other threads. We cannot build shopping centres to house large retail units. We cannot knock old, uninteresting and ugly buildings. Limerick has broad, georgian streets; we do not, except for the Quay, the Mall and Parnell St. We cannot build new streets. We cannot knock old ones. We try, therefore, to build shopping centres which impact as little as possible on the streetscape, but we can hardly build these either. Everything new is considered ugly and out of character with the area.
We are told the solution is to take shopping and high rise out of town, but every urban planner knows that this leads to the death of a city's heart.
McCann, his band of extremists, and locals who hearken back to the quietness and decay of the 50's want Waterford to remain a quiet pleasant little place. But they complain when their kids can't find jobs in their home city and they must travel to Cork or Dublin for shopping and hospital treatment. The same women who said on WLR "waterford has enough shopping" might demand radiotherapy in Waterford the week later. You can't have it both ways.
McCann says Waterford should not have any buildings over 3 storeys. There is no historical precedent for such low rise development in Waterford, except during the bad times, and today it means commercial suicide. I say there should be no buildings less than 5 storeys built in the centre of Waterford! Unless, through historical misfortune it happens to in an area where everything else is dramatically smaller. And then, that might be an argument in favour of of the demolition of other structures.
A lot of people don't like modern architecture. That's fine. But we have to build and replenish the city centre. Otherwise we will never get shops like Mark's & Spencer, Debenhams, HMV, Waterstones, and so on. These stores are now in smaller places than Waterford. I think most of us could agree that Railway Sq. could not possibly look as bad as the ESB building or the train station. And it could even look nice when it's finished, as I suspect it will. In any case, buildings must be built, and I'd rather the city developed rather than waited until for the architecture to improve. If Waterford passes up on this window of prosperity, it will be soon turn in to a Kilkenny without the charming castle in the centre!0
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That told me! :rolleyes:0
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Absolutely right! A good height for buildings any city is 5-8 stories. I heard someone say that as long as you can shout a message down to the street and the fire brigade can reach you, then you're not living up too high.
Your point about Limerick is good too: while it's a city that has its fair share of problems, I always found that the buildings there had a good urban scale to them and sat on fine, broad streets.
I'm not saying that we should widen our streets, but I see no problem building tall, even on narrow streets. And more than anything, where we have broad streets, we should have good urban buildings.
Look at the Mall: at its top end, it's a beautiful street, but it quickly decays into Parnell St, the most unloved street in Waterford if not Ireland. Parnell St should be like Dame St in Dublin, but it's a mess, with horrible pokey buildings and even sheds down one side. The good buildings (between St Joseph's and the excellent Credit Union) are all tatty and unloved, and they've been that way for as long as I can remember (15-20 years).0 -
WLR,MIAB, City Council even 4th year students (Would make a great project for someone) should hold a poll to get peoples opinions of Mr McCann and what he is doing to the City and publish the results.
Oh Wait... we will have a poll on Mr McCann next May (General Election) hopefull this will shut him up for good and send him a clear message that his like will not be tolerated in Irelands oldest City.
I can't believe the amount of press and air time he is getting these days. I think it is a pity that the area at the top of Wyse park is not now going to be re-designated as commercial. As for New Street I think it should all be rezoned commercial.. Can you imagine St. John's Presbytery getting planning permission(4 -5 stories high) today.Before the 8 houses in New Street there used to be Tenniments on this site and they were the same height as St. Johns Presbytery so the whole streetscape was high rise.
What happened was the the teniments were knocked and semi-detatched houses were built instead. These would be more in keeping with Grange Park then a City centre location.
I cannot for the life of mne think that the commercial heart of the city cannot be rezoned from residential to commercial. all at the behest of McCann.
He is holding us all to ransom and MUST be stopped before it is too late and the City is relegated to the also rans, and our City status is stripped from us in an amendent to the local goverment act at some future moment and given to a place like Sligo.0 -
fricatus wrote:Absolutely right! A good height for buildings any city is 5-8 stories. I heard someone say that as long as you can shout a message down to the street and the fire brigade can reach you, then you're not living up too high.
I like that rule of thumb.fricatus wrote:Your point about Limerick is good too: while it's a city that has its fair share of problems, I always found that the buildings there had a good urban scale to them and sat on fine, broad streets.
At the time the wide streets commission tore down the whole of Limerick and built a modern city in its place. In Waterford, for whatever reason, it was decided to leave the old core and build some wide streets around the centre. The Quay had been, 80 years before, already cleared of city wall and was opened up as a thoroughfare. The commission added to this by draining the pill and building the Mall and later Parnell St. The drained land was put to good use, with the Park, amongst other things, being built on it. This explains how the park is starting to flood in recent times. I think that drainage works nearby upset the delicate balance that was there before. Anyway, the point being, Limerick has the streets. We don't. Ideally we'd forget about shopping centres and built streets.fricatus wrote:I'm not saying that we should widen our streets, but I see no problem building tall, even on narrow streets. And more than anything, where we have broad streets, we should have good urban buildings.
Look at the Mall: at its top end, it's a beautiful street, but it quickly decays into Parnell St, the most unloved street in Waterford if not Ireland. Parnell St should be like Dame St in Dublin, but it's a mess, with horrible pokey buildings and even sheds down one side. The good buildings (between St Joseph's and the excellent Credit Union) are all tatty and unloved, and they've been that way for as long as I can remember (15-20 years).
If I was ruling the world, I'd build a large, wide street roughly parallel to Michael St./Broad St./Barronstrand St. outside the city walls going from the Manor to O'Connell St. That way we'd have adequate retail units and you could actually walk around an enlarged city centre without retracing your steps! (forget about solving world hunger, Waterford urban planning is where it's at.)
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Bards wrote:WLR,MIAB, City Council even 4th year students (Would make a great project for someone) should hold a poll to get peoples opinions of Mr McCann and what he is doing to the City and publish the results.
Oh Wait... we will have a poll on Mr McCann next May (General Election) hopefull this will shut him up for good and send him a clear message that his like will not be tolerated in Irelands oldest City.
Indeed, although with all the free publicity he is given, his vote is sure to be up!Bards wrote:I can't believe the amount of press and air time he is getting these days. I think it is a pity that the area at the top of Wyse park is not now going to be re-designated as commercial. As for New Street I think it should all be rezoned commercial.. Can you imagine St. John's Presbytery getting planning permission(4 -5 stories high) today.Before the 8 houses in New Street there used to be Tenniments on this site and they were the same height as St. Johns Presbytery so the whole streetscape was high rise.
I sent an email to WLR about this after the brewery debate on DéiseAM. I was commenting on the fact that McCann, who represents a minority opinion, is given a huge amount of airtime by the station. They said that it is their policy to give both sides of the argument equal time. But this argument, while it sounds all well and good, simply does not stand up in reality. WLR would clearly not give equal air time to racist and race equality arguments. I reckon that there are as many racists in Waterford than there are McCann supporters, but there is no way that their views would be given a fraction of McCann's air time, even if it were legal.
The fact is that the WLR programme director, Billy McCarthy, likes McCann and has sympathy for his arguments, therefore he gets equal air time to those who represent the majority, pro-development (but not at all costs) argument.
RTE does not give equal air time to the Sinn Fein ardheis as it does to the Fianna Fáil ardheis. This is not because RTE does not want to give fair representation to all sides of the political spectrum, quite the contrary: the simple fact is that unless you give air time proportional to the respective popularity of the views already out there, you cease to be an impartial media source, and you tend to give free publicity to certain interests and inadequate publicity to others. This is not "fair".
WLR is simply picking and choosing who they want to give "equal" air time to. As such they are playing politics, whatever they think.Bards wrote:What happened was the the teniments were knocked and semi-detatched houses were built instead. These would be more in keeping with Grange Park then a City centre location.
Good point, I completely forget about the tenements. Surely putting anything smaller than tenements in New Street would be out of character with the area!
Sure if the tenements were there you wouldn't see the New Street carpark at all. (To be honest you can only see it from John's Hill anyway)Bards wrote:I cannot for the life of mne think that the commercial heart of the city cannot be rezoned from residential to commercial. all at the behest of McCann.
He is holding us all to ransom and MUST be stopped before it is too late and the City is relegated to the also rans, and our City status is stripped from us in an amendent to the local goverment act at some future moment and given to a place like Sligo.
What makes McCann dangerous is that he has a superior knowledge of local history to our local politicians. He selectively leaves out or forgets historical facts that does not suit his arguments, yet he is not being caught out nearly often enough.0 -
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Absolutely right! A good height for buildings any city is 5-8 stories. I heard someone say that as long as you can shout a message down to the street and the fire brigade can reach you, then you're not living up too high.
I'm pretty sure Waterford Fire Brigade will not reach you if you are on the
8th storey of a building.
The houses in New Street are hardly tenements.I'm not saying that we should widen our streets, but I see no problem building tall, even on narrow streets. And more than anything, where we have broad streets, we should have good urban buildings.
Tall buildings + narrow streets = dark streets.The same women who said on WLR "waterford has enough shopping" might demand radiotherapy in Waterford the week later. You can't have it both ways.
I do hope the need for Radiotherapy is not being compared to the need for another half dozen womens fashion shops.0 -
merlante wrote:Okay, lets get straight to the point.
I am in favour of tall buildings in Waterford. I am horrified that the Waterford of 1900 was higher rise and more impressive and more consistent than the Waterford of today. (notwithstanding new high buildings which have recently sprung up often amid a furore of criticism)
Looking at old pictures of Waterford shows that the city boasted many large, impressive structures. The Imperial Hotel and the Hotel beside it (now the Tower hotel) seems to have been one floor higher. A massive jail stood on Ballybricken hill, just as the Infirmary and De La Salle College still stand on hills. Adelphi Quay, which was still a quay was high rise and had large buildings along it.
The Quay, which now resembles a row of broken teeth, use to be almost uniform in height, until older buildings were demolished in the 20th century and replaced with structures of lesser height. (e.g. shaws) This has happened elsewhere in the city as well. The result is ugly, inconsistent and completely unsuitable for modern purposes -- or for 1800's Georgian purposes for that matter! These ugly mistakes can no longer be demolished because of McCann and his ilk.
The list of old buildings that could not now be built is long: the Infirmary, the De La Salle College, the Granary/Museum of Treasures, and so on: we have enumerated them already on other threads. We cannot build shopping centres to house large retail units. We cannot knock old, uninteresting and ugly buildings. Limerick has broad, georgian streets; we do not, except for the Quay, the Mall and Parnell St. We cannot build new streets. We cannot knock old ones. We try, therefore, to build shopping centres which impact as little as possible on the streetscape, but we can hardly build these either. Everything new is considered ugly and out of character with the area.
We are told the solution is to take shopping and high rise out of town, but every urban planner knows that this leads to the death of a city's heart.
McCann, his band of extremists, and locals who hearken back to the quietness and decay of the 50's want Waterford to remain a quiet pleasant little place. But they complain when their kids can't find jobs in their home city and they must travel to Cork or Dublin for shopping and hospital treatment. The same women who said on WLR "waterford has enough shopping" might demand radiotherapy in Waterford the week later. You can't have it both ways.
McCann says Waterford should not have any buildings over 3 storeys. There is no historical precedent for such low rise development in Waterford, except during the bad times, and today it means commercial suicide. I say there should be no buildings less than 5 storeys built in the centre of Waterford! Unless, through historical misfortune it happens to in an area where everything else is dramatically smaller. And then, that might be an argument in favour of of the demolition of other structures.
A lot of people don't like modern architecture. That's fine. But we have to build and replenish the city centre. Otherwise we will never get shops like Mark's & Spencer, Debenhams, HMV, Waterstones, and so on. These stores are now in smaller places than Waterford. I think most of us could agree that Railway Sq. could not possibly look as bad as the ESB building or the train station. And it could even look nice when it's finished, as I suspect it will. In any case, buildings must be built, and I'd rather the city developed rather than waited until for the architecture to improve. If Waterford passes up on this window of prosperity, it will be soon turn in to a Kilkenny without the charming castle in the centre!
The height doesn't bother me personally. It's the 'Lego' finish of some of the buildings (Railway Square, Maritana Gate et al) which does. Slabbed concrete bolted together all makes for, in some cases, an unsightly mess.
As I have mentioned elsewhere two great examples of buildings finished to a high standards recently in the City are:
1. The Royal Bank Of Scotland in Canada Street - an exceptionally finished building, but dwarfed by the gloomy Maritana Gate - which is out of keeping with just about everything in the area.
2. The new office buildings at Colbeck Street - perfectly formed and matched to the adjacent buildings. A lesson in how to blend in.
Some of the more modern buildings are more reminiscent of the new Duplo factories on the estate than of buildings of any note. As another poster has said, an opportunity was missed in the likes of Penrose Lane and O'Connell Street to create wider boulevards which would give the impression of greater space. Instead we are left with gloomy streets surrounded by high rise buildings.:mad:0 -
Jor wrote:Tall buildings + narrow streets = dark streets.
I was down the end of the city where all the new apartments are (havent a clue of the street name) but it was a very narrow street only the width of one car and it had 4, 5 and 6 storey apartment blocks either side. now while the buildings themselves looked fine the whole place had a tenement feel to it. The whole block had been rebuilt i dont know why they havent widened the road or even for that matter the footpaths. It seems typical of irish infastructure developments - do one part of it nice but forget about the broader scale.
I'm not disagreeing with high rise developments - im definately all for it, but we have to learn from the mistakes of the past and not have to go tearing down places every 20 or 30 years. why is it that the older buildings in waterford are the finest and yet most of the ones from the 60's onwards and even some of the contemporary ones are an absolute disgrace. Waterford city centre could be a fantastic place with a bit of careful planning and ambition not just patching up here and there.0 -
kano476 wrote:I was down the end of the city where all the new apartments are (havent a clue of the street name) but it was a very narrow street only the width of one car and it had 4, 5 and 6 storey apartment blocks either side. now while the buildings themselves looked fine the whole place had a tenement feel to it. The whole block had been rebuilt i dont know why they havent widened the road or even for that matter the footpaths.
I assume you are talking about the whole area off O'Connell street, the back of Thomas street along Anne street and part of James street, back down onto O'Connell street. The apartments blocks are all quite nice individually and look well from the outside, it's just that, as you said, the planning of it didn't seem to take into consideration the broader picture. Such a high concentration of housing built in such a small area can only be detrimental.
The area badly needed revitalisation, I mean you had a burnt out warehouse on the glen, a disused abbatoir, a couple of horrid looking workshops and a few disused buildings all on top of one another. I feel it was a missed opportunity. It's like the planning department had an internal competition to try and squeeze as many apartment blocks into as small an area as they could. Although to be fair to them I know of at least one of the devleopments that was due to have two more floors on it and planning was refused.
As it is I felt safer walking that area when it was a wreck of a place compared to what it is now. I have fears for what the area will become when (not if) our economy hits a rocky patch in the future.0 -
Roen wrote:I assume you are talking about the whole area off O'Connell street, the back of Thomas street along Anne street and part of James street, back down onto O'Connell street. The apartments blocks are all quite nice individually and look well from the outside, it's just that, as you said, the planning of it didn't seem to take into consideration the broader picture. Such a high concentration of housing built in such a small area can only be detrimental.
The area badly needed revitalisation, I mean you had a burnt out warehouse on the glen, a disused abbatoir, a couple of horrid looking workshops and a few disused buildings all on top of one another. I feel it was a missed opportunity. It's like the planning department had an internal competition to try and squeeze as many apartment blocks into as small an area as they could. Although to be fair to them I know of at least one of the devleopments that was due to have two more floors on it and planning was refused.
As it is I felt safer walking that area when it was a wreck of a place compared to what it is now. I have fears for what the area will become when (not if) our economy hits a rocky patch in the future.
I think you've just about covered it there.0 -
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Roen wrote:I assume you are talking about the whole area off O'Connell street, the back of Thomas street along Anne street and part of James street, back down onto O'Connell street. The apartments blocks are all quite nice individually and look well from the outside, it's just that, as you said, the planning of it didn't seem to take into consideration the broader picture. Such a high concentration of housing built in such a small area can only be detrimental.
The area badly needed revitalisation, I mean you had a burnt out warehouse on the glen, a disused abbatoir, a couple of horrid looking workshops and a few disused buildings all on top of one another. I feel it was a missed opportunity. It's like the planning department had an internal competition to try and squeeze as many apartment blocks into as small an area as they could. Although to be fair to them I know of at least one of the devleopments that was due to have two more floors on it and planning was refused.
As it is I felt safer walking that area when it was a wreck of a place compared to what it is now. I have fears for what the area will become when (not if) our economy hits a rocky patch in the future.
Like you said, it's a damn sight better than what was there before. I think myself that they'll be knocked again and rebuilt in a few years if they are under par. The tax breaks have served their purpose in any case.0 -
Jor wrote:I'm pretty sure Waterford Fire Brigade will not reach you if you are on the
8th storey of a building.
Why not, do we have some kind of handicapped fire brigade as compared with Limerick or Cork?Jor wrote:The houses in New Street are hardly tenements.
They were years ago. High rise tenements. The small buildings that were built in their place were to say the least "out of character with the area". Tiny little houses were built in the city centre not out of choice but because there was no money at the time.Jor wrote:
Tall buildings + narrow streets = dark streets.
Everything in its proper proportion...Jor wrote:
I do hope the need for Radiotherapy is not being compared to the need for another half dozen womens fashion shops.
So this is what my post gets cut down to?
The reality of the matter is that commerical, housing and service development go hand in hand. If you object to everything in sight, and do all your shopping elsewhere, and young people move elsewhere, and go to college elsewhere and the population stagnates, you're not going to get your precious radiotherapy unit. Put simply, people have to think city or think town.
City = Development + Radiotherapy.
Town = Keep Dunnes out for 20 years ala Kilkenny (become tourist town) + No radiotherapy.
I'm not saying we 100% need high buildings to get radiotherapy, but we can't deny development at every opportunity and expect to still expand in our services -- just don't think it works.0 -
At the end of the day we need to create critical mass. Ireland is the most least densly populated country in Western Europe. Without critical mass and a higher density population we will fail to effeciently provide for Infrastructure (Sewerage, Water, Gas, Electricity, public transport etc.), Education, Employment, Retail & Leisure.
The only way to create critical mass and keep a small compact City is by building higher.
Just look at Los angelas as opposed to say New York. New York is Highrise with a good Metro High density & highrise
Whereas LA is low density which creates poor public transport very difficult to get around (urban sprawl) does this sound like Dublin?
We have a choice in Waterford.. do we want to be like LA & Dublin or more Like NY. To me this is no brainer.
We must plan and build for the future not the past.0
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