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DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL has cited the ongoing housing crisis as grounds for refusing planning permission for a new 111-bedroom hotel for Dublin city centre.
Last year, Appalachian Property Holdings Ltd lodged hotel plans to change the use of three floors from office to hotel and construct a new six storey extension at 19-24 at St Andrew’s Street, Dublin 2 while the An Post branch on the ground floor would continue.
The site is located less than 500 metres from College Green and Grafton Street.
In refusing planning permission for the scheme, the City Council has stated that taking into account the ongoing housing crisis and the clear direction in the city development plan in terms of promoting mixed use development with a focus on residential in the city centre, the proposed change of use to hotel does not represent the best use of the upper floors of this partially vacant city centre site.
As part of its refusal, the Council also cited Council’s Housing Need Demand Assessment (HNDA) which recognises a high demand for long term residential rental properties such as apartments in Dublin City where the emerging trend shows an increase of rental demand for this type of residential accommodation.
The Council concluded that the proposed hotel scheme would set an undesirable precedent for similar type development.
The planning authority also concluded that the proposed works would give rise to an unacceptably adverse and injurious impact on the special architectural character and setting of the subject building which is a Protected Structure.
The Council refusal came despite an endorsement of the scheme by Failte Ireland.
In a submission, Failte Ireland’s Management of Environment and Planning, Shane Dineen told the Council that “there is a well recognised shortage of tourist accommodation in Dublin”
Dineen stated that the proposed hotel “would be a valuable addition to the tourist accommodation stock in Dublin and would go some way to address the tourism accommodation shortages being faced by the city”.
In support of scheme, Associate at Tom Phillips + Associates, Lizzie Donnelly told the Council that the scheme “has been designed sensitively and will not give rise to unacceptable impacts upon the surrounding context”.
Donnelly stated that the hotel scheme will bring “a mainly vacant and therefore significantly under-utilised Protected Structure back into active use and everyday enjoyment”.
In a second blow for the tourist sector in the city centre, the Council has also refused planning permission for a new large hotel extension planned for Temple Bar.
Last August, Ampbay Ltd lodged plans to increase the size of the Paramount Hotel on Parliament Street from a 66 bedroom hotel to a 108 bedroom hotel.
However, in refusing planning permission, the Council has ruled that the scheme would represent an overdevelopment of the site and fail to integrate with the existing and surrounding development and would adversely affect the character and setting of protected structures.
The Council also refused planning permission after concluding that the proposed demolition of No 32 Parliament Street cannot be justified from an architectural heritage perspective as it clearly retained significant army 18th century fabric.
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So sad. We are not a real country.
@Helen Collins: shocking that tourists aren’t prioritised over residential dwellings.
@brian o’leary: Sure we’re still waiting on the Bertie-Bowl stadium for the poor FAI….
@brian o’leary: and who do you expect to be able to afford to live 500 metres from Grafton Street- €1 million + council flats?
@Thomas Sheridan: not tourists?
Daft decision!¡!
Would you want to permanently live next to buskers?
Delighted to hear it. About time. Eventhough the FF, FG, Grn Local Counsellors kept saying for years that it was impossible. That there was no provision. While SF and PBP kept saying it WAS possible and there were provisions that could be used.
Its a grave pity that nobody has found a way to bring an injunction against the whole bledy lot of them!! Against Government and City Council, the Planning Board, all Hotel Developers AND Airbnb. Halt every single Hotel under development, about to commence development, or currently submitting or pending Planning decisions anywhere in the County of Dublin. Not just the City. AND halt every high rise densification. AND halt all low-rise multi-unit that is not future proofed and provides no integrated critical amenities proportional to proposed increased population set to occupy their structure.
Injunction against the lot til wannabe Hotels’ land owners and architects re-submit plans for low-rise Residential instead. With basement swimming pool for Residents (with free or heavily discounted access for local, most disadvantaged, schools for after school swim lessons, and Summer Camps); and an obligatory an indoor vertical Rooftop Aquaponic or Hydroponic Farms (to supply ALL Residents, and nearby disadvantaged Schools, with participatory, cooperative, discounted and ZeroCarbon basic Fruit/Vegetables); and an obligation to provide 50-75% free or discounted Power to all Units via Rooftop Solar and [Horizontal + Vertical] Wind Renewables; in addition to incorporating provision of winter-wind-breaking, Summer heat-wave-cooling, vertical foliage on all external walls.
And NO SOCIO-ECONOMIC APARTHEID ENTRANCES/EXITS in any apartment blocks!!!
And no further apartheid assignment of blocks or floors – total randomized socio-econonic mix of apartment assignments.
Ban AirBnB completely and permanently.
Provide Tenant Subletting exception only, for AirBnB. So that *Tenants*, not property owners, can earn some financial relief during short Seasonal or weekend holiday absences. AirBnB was always originally supposed to be a Student/Young Adults abroad service. A safer, better controlled and time-limited subletting than “couch surfing” to randomers, during short absences (like returning home for weekend, visiting home for Christmas or, for example, returning to Ireland from Australia for Granny’s funeral).
We should be protecting the unique Heritage and extra warm welcome of Irish “B and B” traditional businesses from the “professionalisation” of AirBnB rentals, anyway!
Irish B&B was always a far superior business and customer-centic model to that of American and British “Guesthousing”.
I mean the irony and absolute brass neck of recent Airbnb TV advertisements:
“Parents sharing a Hotel room with children….means also sharing a bedtime…..Rent Airbnb instead….”
Such perverse and insensitive obnoxiousness after they have driven tens of thousands of Residents, Families, in Irish Cities – and hundreds of thousands in Cities all over Europe – into Hotel Room Homelessness.
@Pink Freud: WOW!
@Pink Freud: That was easy for you to say.
@Pink Freud: TLDR
Ridiculous decision
About time. It’s ridiculous that we’re building hotels when we don’t have enough apartments and houses. Build more apartment buildings, and then hotel rooms will be freed up because they won’t be used for emergency accommodation.
When FGff Ltd. enacted LAND & Property Rights in the 1949 Constitution for 130k farmers/Big House Anglo Irish estates and Urban wealth belt landlords, (no referendum necessary) they ‘forgot’ to include any basic Housing and Tenure Rights for the great mass of non property /home owners in the State. So in 2024 we have c. 3.5 million ‘homeless’ non property owners sheltering in rental units owned by the small minority WHO HAVE LEGISLATED HOUSING, LAND AND PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE CONSTITUTION.
For nearly four years FGFFGRN Ltd have been sitting on the Housing and Tenure Rights Referendum for which they hired the (secret) Housing Rights Referendum Commission to “Come up with a form of words “to be put to the people in Referendum.”
Not a word in any media organ, politics club or public domain about this, THE MOST IMPORTANT REFERENDUM SINCE PARTITION.
Any guesses as to why?
Refusing permission for a hotel does not add any extra housing. It’s not financially visible to build apartments in the city center under the current planning restrictions. The cost to build a new two bed in the city center is over 600k and the average selling price is under 400k.
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