The Elysian (Idle tower)

daveyjoe

ResearchWill wrote: »

The story of people being moved out, in relation to any part of the building is an urban myth. How do I know, I live there and have done for almost 3 years. The complex is maintained to a very good standard, the garden is kept very well with a guy working on it a fair bit. Security is very good with a person on reception 14 hours per day, then a remote presence at other times. I am renting, as soon as the place fills up I'm out of here it's lovely at the moment but 211 apartments full would be a nightmare.

What's your rent like if you don't mind me asking. You can PM me if you'd prefer.

daveyjoe

iliketeaandcake wrote: »

Judging by this video it has been put to good use by a nimble mad man..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdLuIRSpcsQ

That video is fake by the way, bit of green screen magic!

mambo

The Elysian (Idle Tower) is being discussed on the RTE Liveline right now
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/liveline/

opus

Couldn't resist the comparison, so for €650k you can have an (admittedly nice) flat on one of the upper floors of the Elysian tower built on a busy traffic island in Cork or a 55 bedroom hotel sitting on 3.2 acres on the coast line in Donegal!

Ludo

opus wrote: »

Couldn't resist the comparison, so for €650k you can have an (admittedly nice) flat on one of the upper floors of the Elysian tower built on a busy traffic island in Cork or a 55 bedroom hotel sitting on 3.2 acres on the coast line in Donegal!

Pointless comparison...apples and oranges...

cork_south

opus wrote: »

Couldn't resist the comparison, so for €650k you can have an (admittedly nice) flat on one of the upper floors of the Elysian tower built on a busy traffic island in Cork or a 55 bedroom hotel sitting on 3.2 acres on the coast line in Donegal!

haha, good comparisson.
I'd take the hotel, but I think the heating costs in the winter might be a bit steep

imitation

I'm really not sure why they built it, high rise makes sense when the price of land is too high AND when the commute into the area begins to take ages. Cork is so small its hard to see why anybody ever thought it was a good idea, celtic tiger madness I guess.

I do actually kind of like it, possible because it reminds me of the citadel from Half life 2 http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/13/12001/citadel3.jpg

Sephiroth_dude

daveyjoe wrote: »

What's your rent like if you don't mind me asking. You can PM me if you'd prefer.

I would like to know this too,I think I saw on daft.ie before that they were looking for 1300 a month

Rhys Essien

There might be new tenants in the near future.:D

Solair

I think we should rename it either the Marie Céleste, or the "Empty State Building", which is what the Empire State Building was referred to as during its early days. It was largely unoccupied for years after its was completed

RadioClash

Should be used as an incubator for small tech/business start-ups. Cheap short term leases for those with good ideas who otherwise couldn't afford office space. They do something similar for artists in the old FAS building.

ResearchWill

RadioClash wrote: »

Should be used as an incubator for small tech/business start-ups. Cheap short term leases for those with good ideas who otherwise couldn't afford office space. They do something similar for artists in the old FAS building.

The webworks building right next door to the Elysian all ready provides that service to new small business. http://www.webworkscork.com/, as most of the Elysian is apartments it would not really be suitable for such a scheme.

tonymontana82

having worked there for over a year i can tell ye that the apts aint exactly the highest of standard, just made to look good with a fancy kitchen & fancy lighting controls. they are still fantastic but no way are they worth the prices. its sickening really to watch it all go to waste.

Madam_X

Wtf were they thinking?! Even if the bubble hadn't burst, it just seems like a stupidly extravagant, pointless exercise - pretending Cork was Manhattan kinda thing!

Yeh, people I know who viewed it said they weren't impressed. Rents are pretty affordable there now. Best white elephant example ever.

Solair

I don't think the demographic to fill those kinds of buildings exists in Cork or even in Dublin to be perfectly honest.

You need a cluster of businesses that attract international types for 1 to 2 years. Cork doesn't have anything like that. It's more something you'd expect to see in a drastically bigger city like Brussels.

Also, the apartments seem too small and too low spec to be long-term prospects for a couple with a family.

Then couple that with the fact that for a similar price, you can pick up a charming victorian house, or a 1930s, 40s, 50s well-proportioned suburban house within a short walk from the city centre in somewhere like Blackrock or Montenotte or the Western Suburbs.

The quality of accommodation isn't even remotely comparable - decent garden, total control over the exterior, room to keep several cats as opposed to insufficient room to swing a cat, free on-site parking, free places to put a shed to store your stuff, somewhere to have a BBQ on the 1 day of summer, somewhere to put a swing... Not to mention freehold tenure and no management fees or complications of dealing with management companies.

I can't really see what the attraction of a major apartment building is, unless housing within reasonable distances from the city is unaffordable or unavailable.

Part of the charm of a small city like Cork (or Dublin, Belfast etc) is that it is a very liveable, pleasant city with lots of space and nice houses with big gardens. Apartment living's usually more of a necessary evil than something that people aspire to do and in Ireland and Britain it's still rather sneered at as some kind of a temporary situation that you might do before you have kids / before you get a 'proper house'.

ResearchWill

Solair wrote: »

I don't think the demographic to fill those kinds of buildings exists in Cork or even in Dublin to be perfectly honest.

You need a cluster of businesses that attract international types for 1 to 2 years. Cork doesn't have anything like that. It's more something you'd expect to see in a drastically bigger city like Brussels.

Also, the apartments seem too small and too low spec to be long-term prospects for a couple with a family.

Then couple that with the fact that for a similar price, you can pick up a charming victorian house, or a 1930s, 40s, 50s well-proportioned suburban house within a short walk from the city centre in somewhere like Blackrock or Montenotte or the Western Suburbs.

The quality of accommodation isn't even remotely comparable - decent garden, total control over the exterior, room to keep several cats as opposed to insufficient room to swing a cat, free on-site parking, free places to put a shed to store your stuff, somewhere to have a BBQ on the 1 day of summer, somewhere to put a swing... Not to mention freehold tenure and no management fees or complications of dealing with management companies.

I can't really see what the attraction of a major apartment building is, unless housing within reasonable distances from the city is unaffordable or unavailable.

Part of the charm of a small city like Cork (or Dublin, Belfast etc) is that it is a very liveable, pleasant city with lots of space and nice houses with big gardens. Apartment living's usually more of a necessary evil than something that people aspire to do and in Ireland and Britain it's still rather sneered at as some kind of a temporary situation that you might do before you have kids / before you get a 'proper house'.

I live in the Elysian, the apartments are not small, I'm in the mid range apartments which is 1250 sqfeet plus 150 sqfeet balcony. The apartments range from 950 to over 3500 so small they are not.

While apartment living is not perfect for family it's ideal for many and with 211 apartments there they could fill them.

omerin

I hope these apartments fill up soon. Sure it was an ambitious project, but I'm glad this development was done in my city. This country needs risk takers, people who see the bigger picture, all be it better regulated. To quote George Bernard Shaw "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"

Solair

ResearchWill wrote: »

I live in the Elysian, the apartments are not small, I'm in the mid range apartments which is 1250 sqfeet plus 150 sqfeet balcony. The apartments range from 950 to over 3500 so small they are not.

While apartment living is not perfect for family it's ideal for many and with 211 apartments there they could fill them.

950 - 1250 sq ft compares well to new-build houses, but again, it doesn't compare all that well to older stock (pre late 90s), particularly when you include large gardens.

The 3500 sq ft units are just the small number of penthouses ?

The Elysian apartments were envisaging getting €375,000 to €2,000,000 at launch which turned out to be completely unrealistic.

They will need to drop to realistic price levels before you'll see any major uptake on those units. Banks are also not lending for smaller apartments, so any small units in there may not sell too easily at all.

From what I can gather from various reports, the only sign of life (and a very weak one at that) in the Irish housing market at the moment is in older (1920s-60s) largish family homes with good proportions. Anything else seems to be stagnant.

I think we have to accept too that Irish people (and a lot of UK residents too) simply opt for houses over apartments as there has never been any tradition of living in urban apartments other than perhaps London and a couple of big cities in the UK.

Lack of regulation of apartment complexes in both Ireland and Britain has also led to a lot of problems with lack of adequate management structures, maintenance etc. If some of those issues were addressed, apartment living may become more attractive.

I know the Elysian's developers had a much grander idea than the usual pokey-apartment and they did put in some nice features like the communal gardens and other facilities making it far more like a continental block, but I think it will either have to be re-thought and re-marketed before you'll see significant uptake.

It also needs to get all that retail space leased too which is going to be very difficult in this climate.

The property market being totally flat at the moment is not going to favour anything other than 'safe options' like the traditional suburban house.

tonymontana82

true the larger penthouses are very big but the smaller 1s going for 375.000 are very small, still lovely but i thought they would be around the 100.000 mark. when i said in an above post about working there & not thinking they were built to the highest standard, what i ment was for the price they cost. so i hope i have not offended any1 living there .
It would be sickening for those people though when the prices drastically take a drop which is evident. how are the commercial units doing??

pwurple

I think the Elysian gets an undeserved bashing every now and then. It is a block of apartments in the center of the city. Exactly where a block of apartments should be! They have parking available... which is my bugbear with every other set of apartments in the city. That central garden is over an acre, and well maintained. There is decent ceiling height in all of them, and proper soundproofing. I don't know another complex which is anything like that.

I love the views from up in the tower, and the space in those other units (the low-rise ones) with big terraces is very good for such a central location.

When you consider blocks of flats with no facilities plonked in the middle of nowhere, I actually think this one was well designed and properly planned. Even some of the semi-ds built over the last decade have low ceilings, postage stamp gardens, and no parking. Plus you can hear your next door neighbours chewing the walls are so thin. it is almost as if someone who had lived in a ciy themselves designed them. They seem set up for city living, rather than designed for short term renters.

I'd buy one if I could afford one of the bigger ones for families. I'd love to live in the city center.

Solair

I'd agree it's a lot better than a lot of the 1990s/00s stuff that was built around Cork City.

I've rented a couple of places in Cork from the early 90s era and they were just terrible for the price being looked for a couple of years ago.

Shabby common areas, poor maintenance, noisy (endless doors slamming due to spring-loading, loud neighbours, bad sound proofing), pokey, cigarette smoke-penitration.

One place we rented had on-site parking, but the landlord had rented it out to some business person in town, which meant it was unavailable! This was only revealed after we signed the lease. They wouldn't even give us a remote-control for the gate (spaces too precious) which made moving in/out getting shopping in/out an absolute nightmare involving double-parking on the street and going through heavy spring-loaded doors.

I sincerely hope the Elysian is a major step up from all that chaos.

tonymontana82

pwurple wrote: »

I think the Elysian gets an undeserved bashing every now and then. It is a block of apartments in the center of the city. Exactly where a block of apartments should be! They have parking available... which is my bugbear with every other set of apartments in the city. That central garden is over an acre, and well maintained. There is decent ceiling height in all of them, and proper soundproofing. I don't know another complex which is anything like that.

I love the views from up in the tower, and the space in those other units (the low-rise ones) with big terraces is very good for such a central location.

When you consider blocks of flats with no facilities plonked in the middle of nowhere, I actually think this one was well designed and properly planned. Even some of the semi-ds built over the last decade have low ceilings, postage stamp gardens, and no parking. Plus you can hear your next door neighbours chewing the walls are so thin. it is almost as if someone who had lived in a ciy themselves designed them. They seem set up for city living, rather than designed for short term renters.

I'd buy one if I could afford one of the bigger ones for families. I'd love to live in the city center.

Ya your %100 right with what you say, there was alot of thought put into everything , now there was alot of cheap shortcuts taken which are obviously not visible to the eye. the main complaint here is that they have way overpriced themselves on what the actual apts are worth, every1 on the building site knew it at the time.
Is there any1 living in the penthouse suites?

ResearchWill

tonymontana82 wrote: »

Ya your %100 right with what you say, there was alot of thought put into everything , now there was alot of cheap shortcuts taken which are obviously not visible to the eye. the main complaint here is that they have way overpriced themselves on what the actual apts are worth, every1 on the building site knew it at the time.
Is there any1 living in the penthouse suites?

Yes one of the penthouses in the tower is occupied.

tonymontana82

ResearchWill wrote: »

Yes one of the penthouses in the tower is occupied.

would love to have a gander around there again, ha 1 thing i loved about the place was there was so many spots where we could just go missing for the day, was some balls though before the main lifts were installed, used to have to walk up & down 18 stories numerous times a day with a load of gear.:(

pwurple

tonymontana82 wrote: »

now there was alot of cheap shortcuts taken which are obviously not visible to the eye.

tony, what shortcuts? I knew a guy working on the electrical fit-out, and he said it was good spec stuff going in. Is it structural you mean? Or windows?

As far as I know unless you get one of the show-units they are just shells... No flooring, paint, kitchen, anything. So that fitted stuff would be up to the owner of the unit.

tonymontana82

pwurple wrote: »

tony, what shortcuts? I knew a guy working on the electrical fit-out, and he said it was good spec stuff going in. Is it structural you mean? Or windows?

As far as I know unless you get one of the show-units they are just shells... No flooring, paint, kitchen, anything. So that fitted stuff would be up to the owner of the unit.

ya lad, i was part of the electrical myself. no the structural & windows is perfect but the amount of botch jobs towards the end, there was an awful lot of holes left in walls barely filled in lets just say etc.. dont get me wrong, there was top materials used everywhere from what i saw but there was so many people changing their minds that alot of things just got fecked in anywhere.

Oafley Jones

tonymontana82 wrote: »

ya lad, i was part of the electrical myself. no the structural & windows is perfect but the amount of botch jobs towards the end, there was an awful lot of holes left in walls barely filled in lets just say etc.. dont get me wrong, there was top materials used everywhere from what i saw but there was so many people changing their minds that alot of things just got fecked in anywhere.

Do they still have the nets up to catch the bits that are falling off?

Personally, I think it's a dreadful looking building that has zero architectural merit and isn't in the least bit cohesive in terms of design - an ugly tower bolted to what looks like a 70's Birmingham apartment complex. Location is awful as well.

tonymontana82

Oafley Jones wrote: »

Do they still have the nets up to catch the bits that are falling off?

Personally, I think it's a dreadful looking building that has zero architectural merit and isn't in the least bit cohesive in terms of design - an ugly tower bolted to what looks like a 70's Birmingham apartment complex. Location is awful as well.

What bits are falling off?

Corkblowin

Oafley Jones wrote: »

Location is awful as well.

What are you talking about???!! An apartment building from which you can actually see the main business street, is 10 mins walk from Patricks Street, 5 mins walk to the bus station, 15-20 mins to the train station is poorly located???? If apartments are to be built in Cork you can't really get a better location.

Oafley Jones

tonymontana82 wrote: »

What bits are falling off?

Parts of the upper masonry were falling off a few months back. They had nets up to catch the debris that was falling down.