Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
HE look of shopfronts in Dublin City Centre is in
freefall, owing to an absence of effective planning
enforcement for shopfront planning permissions and
unauthorised shopfronts, signage and uses.
While Grafron St and environs and oft-maligned O’Connell
St have developed some shopfront pride over the last decade,
the streets nearest the Liffey – Capel St, Westmoreland Street,
Dame Street, Parliament Street, Temple Bar generally and the
Quays – are becoming black spots of lower-order shops and fast-
food restaurants with cheap, garish shopfronts and signage.
The increased problem of poor quality shopfronts is city-wide,
but is most insidious in these streets because they comprise the
most visible areas of the city to visitors, right on the tourism
nodes of Trinity College, Dublin Castle and our renowned ‘cultural
quarter’, Temple Bar; and set a tone for the country beyond.
The Council has granted permission for too many licensed
premises and fast-food take-aways in the area in contradiction of
its development-plan policies to ensure a balanced mix of uses on
city streets and prevent an over-concentration of this use but it is
also not good at maintaining the public spaces entrusted to it. For
example the quality of the pervasive new granite around the city
is dubious – arguably it does not have any of the qualities, such
as imperviousness, required of that substance. And the Council
is not good at maintaining the beautiful old granite kerbing.
The recession is creating a big increase in closure and
vacancy rates, and a proliferation of discount shops, and
other outlets who compete for the cheap and cheerful look
that might just denote better value, in an era when the
signal it gives about quality is ignored. In this environment,
increased vigilance is needed to uphold standards and
prevent major deterioration in streets. Instead, there
seems to be no planning enforcement in operation at all.
The City Council’s never-too-dynamic Planning Enforcement
department has been cut back and
its staff reduced to a bare minimum.
Enforcement is a ‘frontline’ planning
service and should be the last area to
be cut back. The City Council Roads
Department, for example, would
appear to be inefficient and profligate
(a survey by An Taisce in September
2010 found more than one hundred
bare and redundant traffic poles
standing in prominent locations around the city
centre. A pole costs the taxpayer €500 to erect!)
The lack of enforcement and active management
of streets contributes to the ongoing loss of
independent shops and businesses with ‘personality’
– as exemplified by the recent closures of the Opus
music store on South Great Georges St and the replacement
in Temple Bar of Fitzers and then Frankie’s Steakhouse with
a McDonalds and of Bruno’s restaurant with a Café Costa.
Dublin lacks ‘institutional’ stores and shops that are
passed from one generation to the next. In a boom-town
with feeble planning regulation, why
not
make Daddy’s toy-
shop into a themed super pub (with toys in the window)?
The condition of the area is at odds with the designations of
Conservation Areas, Areas of Special Planning Control, Protected
Structures, land-use zoning, the shopfront design guidelines etc.
During the boom years An Bord Pleanála could generally be
relied upon to overturn and curtail the give-permission-at-all-cost
approach of Dublin City Council planning department. However
it has more recently reflected a permissive attitude concerning
certain ‘lower order’ uses in the Capital’s city centre.
Kevin Duff is a Dublin City Association member of An Taisce
NEWS SHOPFRONTS
Dublindictment
Dublin city centre is a mess. By .
Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2: messy
Poles
Before: Historic kerb, Bull Alley Street, Dublin 8
After: First repair in white granite, 2012 (DCC Roads Maintenance). Once it gets in,
the way is open for more.
26 — village October – November 2013
CENTRA, 46 WELLINGTON QUAY/13 TEMPLE BAR
(PROTECTED STRUCTURE)
HUNGRY HARRY’S
TEMPLE BAR
THE applicant stated in the
cover letter with the plans:
“The existing white colour of
the façade uncharacteristic for
the Quays would be replaced
with a terracotta colour to
re-establish the red-brick
colour of the river front”.
The façade has instead
been repainted yellow which,
apart from not complying
with the planning permission,
is visually inappropriate
to the historic location
and is uncharacteristic
of the Liffey Quays.
The proposed fascia
lettering was to be of
aluminium in a ‘pale colour’
with caps measuring 350mm
and lower case 300mm. The
lettering as installed is
significantly larger than this
and is finished in a canary
yellow colour. The large size
and strong yellow colour
of the signage, together with the yellow facade, create a cheap
appearance ill-befitting the adjoining architectural composition
of the Ha’penny Bridge and Merchants’ Hall which is one of the
images of the city and is endlessly photographed by tourists.
There is a history of poor-quality presentation as a result of non-
compliance with approved plans for shopfronts, signage and lighting
by this operator at this address dating back to the mid-2000s.
The Centra operator clearly feels it is ok to be granted permission by
Dublin City Council for one thing and then to do something different.
IN the run-up to the opening of McDonald’s in
its main square this summer (see page 28), a
fast food restaurant further along Temple Bar’s
main strip – run by Pat McDonagh as Hungry
Harry’s – brazenly rebranded itself as Supermac’s,
erecting without planning permission a new
‘traditional style’ shopfront with plastic lettering
in place of the Group 91 architects’ stone-and-
steel, house-style shopfront, erected in the 1990s
while Temple Bar was being regenerated.
The fast-food takeaway use at Hungry Harry’s
had already been refused four times over
the course of two planning applications.
LOWER ORMOND QUAY
This premises, formerly the riotous Town and Country auction
house, operated without planning permission for most of
2012 as a casino, with an aesthetic that was as stylish as
its clientele was grubby. In the end it was refused retention
permission for a change of use from previous retail use
at basement, ground and first floor to a ‘Private Members
Club’, so in the last weeks it has reinvented itself as a
tattoo parlour with no permission for its signage, the only
illuminated plastic signage on this stretch of the quays
27
NEWS SHOPFRONTS
TEMPLE BAR PUB
TEMPLE BAR
13 PARLIAMENT STREET
(PROTECTED STRUCTURE)
6 QUEEN STREET
(PROTECTED STRUCTURE)
THE frontage of this ‘traditional pub’ is a
confectionery of gratuitious, under-detailed
and inauthentic mediocrity. It can be seen that
numerous items have added to the exterior:
neon projecting sign at high level; projecting
sign above fascia on Temple Bar frontage;
two projecting signs at corner above fascia;
heritage style lamps at first floor level.
There is no record of planning permission
for any of these items. Hanging-strip Christmas
lights erected at Christmas some years ago are
being left up all year round. There are bulky
uplighters, downlighters, flower-basket brackets,
a multitude of lamps and projecting signs all
attached to the historic brick elevation of the pub.
Addition of more signage, lighting and other
clutter to the facades is not only unauthorised
but entirely unnecessary for the purposes of
identification of the premises and is only serving
to obscure the architectural character of the
building as a late-Georgian pub/shop-type
premises which should be its main attraction.
In the 1990s the then owners
tried to demolish the pub but were
successfully appealed by An Taisce.
In 2008, an application for take-away use
additional to the existing restaurant (Little Sicily)
was made. The City Council permitted it on the
basis that ‘The take away use shall be clearly
subsidiary to the main use as a restaurant. Reason:
In order to safeguard the amenities of the area.’
The restaurant subsequently reopened as
a kebab fast-food restaurant and take-away
with numerous unauthorised illuminated signs
and reflective black PVC fascia added to the
shopfront. A complaint was lodged with the
City Council’s Planning Enforcement section.
A retention application was made for this
unauthorised signage in March 2009. In its decision
to permit this, the Council stipulated that “within
three months of this grant of planning permission
[May 2010], the applicant shall remove all
unauthorised signage from the shopfront and “The
fascia timber shall be painted black with off-white
handpainted lettering of no more than 400mm high”.
Three years after the unauthorised illuminated
signage and reflective black fascia were due
to be removed, none of this has been done.
In 2012, the vacant shop unit of a Georgian
building on Queen Street with apartments
upstairs sought permission for a fast food
takeaway. Following a grant of permission by
the City Council, an appeal was made on the
basis that the applicant was simply looking
to target exiting customers of the three
public houses directly adjoining and that the
residential use of the building upstairs made
it unsuitable for takeaway use. Nevertheless
permission was given by An Bord Pleanála.
food
IN April 2012, An Bord Pleanala rewrote the rules by permitting
a McDonalds in Temple Bar Square, epicentre of Dublin’s
designated ‘cultural quarter’. The City Council once designated
the Temple Bar area as a fast-food-free area when it benefited
from tax incentives, but lost its nerve a decade ago, so there’s
always something cow-based to munch on post-Stag-swilling.
MCDONALD’S
TEMPLE BAR
28 — village October – November 2013
