Businessman Harry Crosbie is making a fresh attempt to secure the green light for a hotel scheme Dublin’s docklands.
Mr Crosbie’s Misery Hill Entertainment Ltd is shortly to lodge plans with Dublin City Council for a 34-bedroom hotel at 9 Hanover Quay and adjoining Grand Canal Dock.
Mr Crosbie’s firm is seeking to change the use of his home at 9 Hanover Quay to a mixed-use cafe/bar with a soundproof music entertainment venue and the 34-bedroom hotel.
The proposal also seeks to demolish an on-site conservatory and replace it with a building adjoining the protected stone malt house building with a two-storey extension above the existing roofline.
The proposed development is within the North Lotts & Grand Canal Dock Strategic Development Zone.
The Crosbie home at 9 Hanover Quay – bought for €18,000 32 years ago – is a protected structure.
Mr Crosbie incorporated Misery Hill Entertainment Ltd only last month where himself and his wife, Rita, are the company’s directors.
The move to seek planning permission follows five years after Dublin City Council refused planning permission to Mr Crosbie for a luxury boutique 19-room hotel for 9 Hanover Quay over a row concerning the public gaining free access to the waterfront at his planned hotel.
The city council turned down planning permission after Mr Crosbie refused to countenance such access.
In a further information request the council requested Mr Crosbie to investigate the possibility of maximising public access to the quayside at his planned hotel.
In response, however, Mr Crosbie stated in a letter that if the council “insists on an open quayside, then I would prefer to abandon the project and stay as we are now”.
Mr Crosbie – who has helped transform Dublin’s docklands over the years with the construction of the Point music venue, now the 3Arena, and the Bord Gáis theatre – said: “To allow free access would bring chaos and would be unsafe and attract antisocial behaviour in this very narrow strip. This behaviour can be unpleasant and nasty.”
In the letter, Mr Crosbie added: “It would be impossible to run a business with huge crowds of young people regularly sunbathing right up against our windows as now regularly happens around the basin on summer days.”
Elsewhere in Dublin Mr Crosbie is seeking planning permission for a four-star 182-bedroom Vicar Street “rock and room” concept hotel beside his Vicar Street entertainment venue.
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