A city square is to be built on the site of the former Carlton cinema on O'Connell Street, after many years of legal wrangling, writes Jack Fagan.
Plans to create a new public square on the site of the disused Carlton cinema to link Upper O'Connell Street with Moore Street in Dublin 1 are to be unveiled this autumn as part of a long delayed rejuvenation scheme for the area.
Dublin Central Architects, representing three architectural practices, have apparently agreed on an overall design for a new shopping, leisure and residential area covering more than four acres between Upper O'Connell Street and the Ilac Centre.
The square will become the centrepiece of the new quarter which will cost more than €500 million to develop and will directly link O'Connell Street into the retail core of the city.
The Ilac centre is undergoing a major remodelling and upgrading and on the opposite side of Henry Street, Arnotts is gearing up for a massive redevelopment that will greatly enlarge the shopping areas.
The scheme is expected to include about 6,503sq m (700,000sq ft) of double-height shopping with a heavy emphasis on restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities to attract tourists.
Planning permission will also be sought for a high quality hotel with 150 bedrooms and a wide choice of apartments to attract both single people and families.
The overall success of the development will be strengthened by the City Council's proposed rejuvenation of the adjoining Parnell Square where the planned opening of a new Metro station is expected to generate a huge increase in pedestrian traffic.
Joe O'Reilly's Chartered Land, nominated by the City Council to handle the regeneration of the Upper O'Connell Street area, has been coordinating the overall plans which are being handled by three architectural firms, BKD, McGarry Ni Eanaigh and Donnelly Turpin.
Although it will be 10 years next month since the Carlton site initiative was first announced, it has been repeatedly held up by legal wrangling between the Carlton Group of landowners and the City Council and also between the owners.
The council put a compulsory purchase order on the site in December 2001, after determining that the Carlton Group, which had secured planning permission for the site in 1999, had neither the finance nor the expertise to advance the project.
A challenge to the CPO by architect Paul Clinton, a member of the Carlton Group, was dismissed by the High Court and is now on appeal to the Supreme Court.
Although the lengthy legal process has prevented the redevelopment of the site, the saga involving the Carlton and the vacant site beside it has gone on even longer. The site has been vacant since 1979 and the cinema has been closed since 1994.
Since then the cinema has been suggested as a venue for a national conference centre, now under construction at Spencer Dock, and as a site for the Abbey Theatre.
