Department store company Arnotts is seeking planning permission for a massive redevelopment of its extensive properties behind Henry Street in Dublin, where it aims to create a new shopping, entertainment and residential zone akin to the fashionable SoHo district in New York.
The €700 million Northern Quarter project, which is being led by Arnotts chairman Richard Nesbitt SC, includes proposals for a new central plaza between Henry Street and Middle Abbey Street.
If planning approval is granted, construction work could continue for the remainder of the decade.
The aim is to attract big-name mass market international retailers such as the fashion chains Abercrombie & Fitch and Armani Xchange and Apple Computer into the Henry Street zone, a retail hub which has largely stolen the march on Grafton Street in recent years.
"We believe this project is exactly the kind of ambitious, visionary development the area needs. The Northern Quarter will write the next chapter in the evolving history of Dublin city, retaining the charm of an open-street environment by overlaying it with the dynamism and diversity of a modern European capital," said Mr Nesbitt.
In preparation for the scheme, Arnotts has spent some €100 million in the past two years buying up most of the buildings between Henry Street, the GPO Arcade, Middle Abbey Street and Liffey Street.
The central plaza will comprise 47 new shop buildings, 17 cafes, restaurants, bars and 189 apartments. A 152-bedroom four-star hotel will be built behind the old Independent Newspapers building on Middle Abbey Street.
The plaza will be connected to O'Connell Street through an extension from Princes' Street, an underdeveloped thoroughfare which Arnotts hopes to revitalise as a pedestrianised central route into the plaza. Car-parking and service bays will be located in an underground complex, which will be accessed via a tunnel at the junction of O'Connell Street and Middle Abbey Street.
In addition, Arnotts wants to build two new streets to connect the plaza with Henry Street and Middle Abbey Street. Princes' Street North, off Henry Street, and Abbey Lane, off Middle Abbey Street, will be roughly parallel to Liffey Street.
While Arnotts' department store has been a central feature of the Henry Street scene for generations of shoppers, the plan will see the focus of its building moved southwest towards Liffey Street. Such a move will reduce its iconic shopfront on Henry Street, but it will provide frontage directly on to the plaza and increased frontage on Middle Abbey Street and Liffey Street.
Mr Nesbitt, a barrister who led the takeover of Arnotts in June 2003, said the initiative will create a "renewed sense of pride" in the north city area. He suggested it could act as the catalyst for further development of the Lotts Street area next to the Liffey.
A new pedestrian bridge over the river between O'Connell Bridge and the Ha'penny Bridge was also possible, Arnotts said.
