Any plans for Barrow Street area?

carlmango11

Does anyone know if there are any current plans for the GCD/Barrow Street area? Seems half-finished in places. Crumbling eyesores on one side, gleaming slick buildings on the other.

The area is very nice and I can imagine demand is high. So why no more construction?

kitty3kids

Dublin City council are currently hearing oral submissions from business and community groups as part of the stratigic development plan of the area. Once these are completed they will announce plans to finish the GCD area.

Google are currently building in barrow street so there's lots of work going on down there. Don't what's planned for the old bolands mills though.

hfallada

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/financial-services/google-spends-65m-for-third-property-on-barrow-street-1.1646305

The area is slowly being redeveloped. But if Dublin didnt have such restrictive planning laws, Dublin 2 would be full of nice high rise office buildings. And most importantly apartments, which would be great as people wouldnt be forced to live in the suburbs and commute for hours every week. But an bord Planala believes Dublin should be low rise to protect its heritage and character. But totally ignores thousands of acres of highly fertile farmland has been destroyed in recent years to make way for poor quality, over priced housing with little or no transport links.

Most cities have amazing sky rise buildings which will probably be admired as much as our Georgian houses. But plannings agencies believe our cities should be long rise and be nothing but featureless suburbia.

neris

Google are putting in a bridge between the two sides of the road to cut down on their staff walking across the road. The council have started putting in the dublin bikes station outside bolands. Google own most of the commercial buildings on the road except bolands. Dont know who owns bolands but theres a lot of issues with the site as parts of it are protected structures. the original plans were for offices apartments and a hotel. Dont forget that barrow street is a residential area aswell. There was talk of the road being resurfaced as its in bits and the traffic is chaotic everyday mainly due to the good aul dublin taxi driver who thinks he can dump his car anywhere.

vrusinov

Most cities have amazing sky rise buildings which will probably be admired as much as our Georgian houses. But plannings agencies believe our cities should be long rise and be nothing but featureless suburbia.

Dublin city center is much nicer than almost anyone with boring glass sky-rise buildings. The only city where they look nice is NYC, and only because there are enough small buildings and parks.

There are plenty of places with good connectivity to city centre where office building and apartments can be built.
Concentrating everything in city center will cause severe traffic problems so it would be impossible to get in or out, especially during rush ours or weekends (do you want to get stuck in traffic for hours in Saturday morning trying to go out for picnic? or be cramped in dart?), especially taking into account narrowness of old city streets.

carlmango11

vrusinov wrote: »

Dublin city center is much nicer than almost anyone with boring glass sky-rise buildings.

And what about the rest of the city? The endless, sprawling housing estates of semi-detached, character-less houses?

vrusinov wrote: »

The only city where they look nice is NYC

You really think NYC is the only city that has nice, high-rise buildings? Have you ever been to Canary Wharf?

vrusinov wrote: »

There are plenty of places with good connectivity to city centre where office building and apartments can be built.

Yeah, like Grand Canal Dock.

The parts of the area that are built up look great. Everyone I've spoken to agrees. Now can we finally get over our phobia of anything higher than 2 stories and continue building like this?

vrusinov

carlmango11 wrote: »

And what about the rest of the city? The endless, sprawling housing estates of semi-detached, character-less houses?

rest of the city - fine. However, don't be too excited about replacing "housing estates of semi-detached, character-less houses" with "housing estates of 9-stories character-less houses". They have some advantages, mostly price-related. Other than that, they suck even it built properly.

I've been living in 5 to 10 story buildings of various quality most of my life. I live now in apartment in a very modern 7-story building in South Dublin which is much nicer then any other apartment before, but it still suck. I plan to move to a house eventually.

I don't mind building business districts - they look nice as long as they don't occupy whole city. Grand Canal Dock looks nice and everyone agrees to that. But even with lots of expats live in that area, it almost dies on weekends and I yet to hear any person who would like to live there for the rest of the life.

hfallada

vrusinov wrote: »

Dublin city center is much nicer than almost anyone with boring glass sky-rise buildings. The only city where they look nice is NYC, and only because there are enough small buildings and parks.

There are plenty of places with good connectivity to city centre where office building and apartments can be built.
Concentrating everything in city center will cause severe traffic problems so it would be impossible to get in or out, especially during rush ours or weekends (do you want to get stuck in traffic for hours in Saturday morning trying to go out for picnic? or be cramped in dart?), especially taking into account narrowness of old city streets.

Have you ever seen the high rises of Shanghai or Dubai. They are breath taking and a massive tourist attention. There is nothing boring about a 40 story apartment block with amenities such as a cinema or sports center. Most housing estates in the suburbs dont even have enough school spaces and lack any form of services.

Having everyone living in the city and good public transport solves congestion issues. LA which is the ultimate example of low rise, urban sprawl has the worst congestion of any city in the US.

Ranchu

I've been to London loads of times. I have no interest in visiting Canary Wharf.

I'm assuming the buildings people are complaining about on Barrow Street are the mill and the buildings beside it. One is The Factory which is a great space used by artists. Nothing wrong with it and it certainly doesn't need redevelopment. What ever happens with the mill I'd hope the original red brick building will be restored and kept. Fact of the matter is that it is already a joke around there for traffic. Throwing in loads more apartments or offices is only going to exacerbate that problem.

Lots of people have lived around Ringsend for generations. They have every right to continue living there unmolested by architecture junkies. As someone pointed out above a large percentage of new people moving to the area vacate every weekend. They do not contribute to the community.

AndonHandon

With Facebook and William Fry moving to GCD the area is going to be even more over-crowded and more in need of accommodation. That should be the main priority with any development going forward.

carlmango11

Ranchu wrote: »

Lots of people have lived around Ringsend for generations. They have every right to continue living there unmolested by architecture junkies. As someone pointed out above a large percentage of new people moving to the area vacate every weekend. They do not contribute to the community.

To be honest I really hate that attitude when it comes to urban development. Just because people live there doesn't mean we can't move forward. By that logic we should just stop development altogether so as not to displace any communities.

Look at Mayor Square. Such a nice little example of how dense, mixed use development backed by public transport can create great urban areas. Personally I think the inner city should only be built like this. If people want their front gardens and their back gardens and their driveways they can live in the suburbs and commute in the traffic.

Aard

hfallada wrote: »

The area is slowly being redeveloped. But if Dublin didnt have such restrictive planning laws, Dublin 2 would be full of nice high rise office buildings. And most importantly apartments, which would be great as people wouldnt be forced to live in the suburbs and commute for hours every week. But an bord Planala believes Dublin should be low rise to protect its heritage and character.

ABP doesn't "think" anything -- they just go by what a particular Development Plan says. In this case that would be Dublin City. And DC Councillors are famous for going against successive recommendations from planners to allow for high-rise.

Councillors vote on Development Plans -- blame them.

Aard

hfallada wrote: »

Have you ever seen the high rises of Shanghai or Dubai. They are breath taking and a massive tourist attention. There is nothing boring about a 40 story apartment block with amenities such as a cinema or sports center. Most housing estates in the suburbs dont even have enough school spaces and lack any form of services.

Having everyone living in the city and good public transport solves congestion issues. LA which is the ultimate example of low rise, urban sprawl has the worst congestion of any city in the US.

High rise does not necessarily equal high density.

LA is both "low rise" and the most densely populated urban area in the United States.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas and sort by density.)

Ranchu

carlmango11 wrote: »

To be honest I really hate that attitude when it comes to urban development. Just because people live there doesn't mean we can't move forward. By that logic we should just stop development altogether so as not to displace any communities.

Look at Mayor Square. Such a nice little example of how dense, mixed use development backed by public transport can create great urban areas. Personally I think the inner city should only be built like this. If people want their front gardens and their back gardens and their driveways they can live in the suburbs and commute in the traffic.

I don't have a problem with moving forward but creating a short term plastic community and pushing out one of the oldest communities in Dublin is not the answer. Mayor Square is hardly a roaring success. It's a ghost town in the evening and on the weekends. As is the GCD area.

The developments in the area have been largely hit and miss. The hotels seem to be doing ok due to their close proximity to town. The theatre is in Nama as is most of the rest of the area. The only other business doing well are convenience stores and cafés.

Nobody wants the multitude of empty retail outlets on Pearse Street or the 3 or 4 retail units built in the village in the last decade. They have all either never been rented or have failed miserably after opening. Same story over at The Point Village. All that has happened is that the local convenience shops in the area have been closed in favour of tesco, Donnybrook Fair etc.

There's no point knocking existing used premesis to fill it with more empty retail units is my main point here. If you lived in the area you would realise that while some of it has been positive a lot of it hasn't. It's easy for people on the outside looking in to have an opinion but it's based on nothing if you have no knowledge of how the place works.

Aard

Ranchu wrote: »

There's no point knocking existing used premesis to fill it with more empty retail units is my main point here. If you lived in the area you would realise that while some of it has been positive a lot of it hasn't. It's easy for people on the outside looking in to have an opinion but it's based on nothing if you have no knowledge of how the place works.

That's a really interesting point. I think there is a realisation among the people behind the SDZ that there has been too much of a focus on retail in the area.

Indeed many people are critical of the City Council's apparent dislike of ground floor apartments, and that they prefer to see ground floor retail instead. The same thing can be seen down at Clancy Quay where even in a relatively secluded development there is way too much non-residential ground floor use.

Has the existing area (i.e. Ringsend/Pease St) suffered in terms of retail due to the GCD developments do you think?

Ranchu

The post office is gone. It was moved from its original premises to a short lived Spar in a new development. The Spar lasted about a year before the Tesco express opened 3 doors down, that became a discount store but only lasted a few months. Now there is no post office in Ringsend village. The original post office became a wine shop which then became a fitness shop for a couple of months and is now a butchers. It's a stones throw from another butchers so I'm sure one of them won't last.

The Widow Scallans on Pearse Street was knocked, a centra was built and that has since closed and has been disused for a couple of years. It has been a merry go round of openings and closures all around this area. Pubs are changing ownership on a constant basis as well. The new residents are not using the local amenities that were there preferring to drink in town and shop in the mini supermarkets. The loss of the Post Office has been the worst for a lot of elderly residents in and around the village.

Aard

Sounds like a really bad idea to have tinkered with the PO at all. I never really liked those post offices in the backs of shops myself either. Was it An Post who made the decision or was it part of the GCD planning scheme do you know?

It's no surprise that the blow ins prefer to socialise in town. They're by and large a transient group, so there's little chance to build up loyalty to the locality. If there were more families or at least permant residents there'd be a better sense of community and better integration.

Ranchu

I'm not sure who's decision the post office moving was but there was assurances made that it would not leave the village. There was pressure put on tesco to take it but it didn't happen.

I'm a blow in myself but I have been here the best part of a decade and have seen a lot of the changes happen. I certainly don't think further forced closures is the answer.

ongarboy

http://www.ddda.ie/files/business/docs/gcdpart2.pdf

This gives some indication of the plans for future development in the area.

I don't know about how well urban renewal has truly worked in Dublin. Smithfield and IFSC/Spencer Dock both are soulless at the weekends and seem to house large populations of transient renters who move on after a while. Grand Canal seems to be similar. I think if they did something with Bolands Mills, the place would definitely be more attractive but whether it would have appeal as a place to socialise/entertain/visit, I'm still not sure. Historic urban cores with unique and period buildings housing all sorts of businesses/curiousity shops/bars/clubs/cafes etc like Rathmines, Camden St/Wexford St and now even Stoneybatter since it became "gentrified" have more appeal.