For many years there was a derelict building between Paradise Place and Mountjoy Street and beside it is the famous Black Church.
It is now being redeveloped as the “Black Church View” project, which will consist of 114 shared accommodation units, a café, gym, co-working space and indoor and outdoor recreation and amenity spaces.
Below is a somewhat idealised description of co-living.
Each floor is seen as a single community and private resident rooms feed into shared residential communal facilities. According to the developer apartment sizes will be well in excess of the minimum floor area required under current planning regulations.
Co-living is a residential community living model that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people living in the same dwelling unit. Generally co-living is a type of intentional community that provides shared housing for people with similar values or intentions. The co-living experience may simply include group discussions in common areas or weekly meals, although will oftentimes extend to shared workspace and collective endeavours such as living more sustainably. An increasing number of people across the world are turning to co-living in order to unlock the same benefits as other communal living models (such as communes or co-housing), including “comfort, affordability, and a greater sense of social belonging.”
Co-living as a modern concept traces its origins to shared living models of the 19th and 20th centuries such as tenements in the UK, boarding houses in the US, and chawls in western India, yet ancient forms of communal living such as the longhouse date back thousands of years. Its contemporary form has gained prominence in recent years due to a combination of factors including increased urbanisation rates, a lack of affordable housing options, greater rates of disability requiring group home or assisted living arrangements, and a growing interest in lifestyles not dependent upon long-term contracts.
KEVIN STREET COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED BUT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY HAS SURVIVED
I am trying to locate some earlier photographs of Kevin Street College as it was and I will publish them as soon as I locate them.
It should be noted that the attractive red brick building in some of my photographs is Kevin Street Public Library which officially reopened in 2018 after being closed for five years while undergoing long-needed renovations. The building itself is a modest but important one, and though not a protected structure, it has served as a public library for over 100 years. It boasts beautiful reading rooms that have been hidden from public view for many years. The interior is bright, airy, and charming with substantial natural light.
In 1963, the Minister for Education signed a contract for a new building for the College of Technology at Kevin Street. The project was completed in 1968, with Hooper & Mayne as the architects. It was described as an International Style building, with the administration and entrance block to Kevin Street capped by a wavy canopy on the fourth floor.
In 2021 An Bord Pleanála granted a 10 year planning permission to Shane Whelan’s Westridge Real Estate for the development of 53,110 sq ft of office accommodation in two 11-storey blocks alongside 299 build to rent apartments across three buildings of up to 14 storeys in height. Westridge acquired the 3.57 acre site for €140 million in August 2019 and a report lodged with the plans by EY estimates that the total output that the redevelopment will generate over 10 years is €7.67 billion.
I was 15 years old when I completed my secondary education, too young to begin at Trinity College so my parents thought that it would make sense for me to undertake a pre-university course in science at Kevin Street College. Towards the end of 1965 I was offered a place on a new course due to begin in 1966 and I accepted the offer with the agreement of my parents. However, my Grandmother was furious as she could not understand why anyone would choose a Vocational Institution over Trinity College and unfortunately future events proved her right but that is a complicated story.
The four year course was known as “Telecommunications and Electronic Technicians Wholetime” [WRTT] and there is no doubt that it was an excellent education in every way. What was really sad was that most of the eighteen students on the initial course had to leave Ireland to find suitable employment. One or two went to the UK but the majority went to the USA. To this day I have never, again, met-up with any of the class.
ST BRENDAN’S WAY FROM CONSTITUTION HILL TO LOWER GRANGEGORMAN
Many building workers were to return to work today so I decided to visit a number of construction sites to see if there was any activity.
When I visited the Broadstone Gate and associated plaza I was a bit disappointed as there were only a few at work however there were many more nearer to Lower Grangegorman. I was disappointed because the project is very much behind schedule and the pandemic related lockdowns cannot be the only cause for failing to meet the original schedule.
The purpose of the Broadstone Gate is provide a key access to the Grangegorman University campus. It will be finished as a public plaza and the access will provide a major linkage between Grangegorman and Dublin city. The plaza is situated off Constitution Hill on the site of the old royal canal at the former Great Western Railway Station commonly known as Broadstone, and will mark a prominent entrance to the Grangegorman urban quarter.
In May 2016, the boundary wall dividing Broadstone and Grangegorman was removed, creating a historic pathway joining the two sites for the first time. However, the pathway remained closed for many years and even now access is limited to specific times of the day [maybe because there is no public lighting]
Under the Grangegorman Masterplan, the primary urban path through Grangegorman – St Brendan’s Way will link with the Broadstone Gate which when completed will reach as far as Prussia Street. The link with Broadstone can also be seen as an extension to the 18th century historic spine of Dublin City which covered Dublin Castle across Grattan Bridge, along Capel Street/Bolton Street, Henrietta Street [where I live] and King’s Inn.
AN UGLY GAP IN THE STREETSCAPE – WHERE THE ORMOND HOTEL WAS
All construction workers can return to work tomorrow [4 May 2021] and it then that it becomes obvious that some projects have been abandoned. It would be very disappointing if the construction of the new hotel does not restart this week.
The iconic Ormond Hotel on the north quays was purchased for just €2.5 million by Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes in the middle of the recession. In 2013, planning permission was sought to demolish the old building and replace it with a 170 bedroom hotel but the plan was rejected but eventually the owner was granted permission to develop a smaller 121 room hotel.
The €25 million redevelopment project was expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2020 but there were many problems and the project was delayed and then there was was Covid-19.
The built environment in Dublin is changing faster than I can photograph the changes and there is an area on South Richmond Street that has caught me by surprise as many of the restaurants and shops have closed or disappeared.
Richmond Villas off South Richmond Street [shown as Richmond Street South on Google Maps] was once a place to visit if you were interested in Street Art but now it is dominated by a huge construction site [Charlemont Square where Amazon will be located]. I assume that the laneway will no longer exist once the building project has been completed especially as the Bernard Shaw Pub closed at the end of 2019 and relocated to Cross Guns Bridge.
Amazon employs more than 2,500 people in Ireland and announced plans to create many new jobs most of which will be located Dublin at Blanchardstown, Tallaght, North Count Dublin and the South Richmond Street in the Portobello area of Dublin.
The Charlemont Square project was due to be completed in 2020 but this has been delayed because of Covid-19 restrictions.
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