The heat has gone from the market, and Dublin is not likely to attract foreigner buyers for quite some time, writes Orna Mulcahy
RETURNING FROM holiday last weekend was painful. Like being banished to the gulag, said one of the party who, by midweek, had taken to bed with a combination of jet-lag and general despair. The weather has been particularly cruel, and it must have taken superhuman effort for Brian Cowen to get out of bed on Tuesday to sleet and slush and the slashing of pensions.
The wind howled in protest, along with the civil servants. On top of all our economic woes, there is one simple fact of our lives that no stimulus package will correct. We live in the north, with short days that sometimes never get bright, and long nights with nothing to look forward to except the news headlines the next morning. We are almost, but not quite, on the same latitude as Moscow and, as if to remind us of the fact, this week the wind swept in from Siberia, making it the coldest spell recorded in 18 years. It truly feels like a winter of discontent.
With a grey woolly sky hanging just above our heads, the nation is probably dealing with a full scale case of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, also known as winter depression. Perhaps every household should be issued with a light box to bring some sunshine into the situation, but in the meantime I’m quietly defying attempts to switch over to energy efficient bulbs, since the sickly light they throw makes the long evenings even more depressing.
I certainly felt sad not to be able to share the delirium of my seven-year-old at the sight of all that snow promising snowballs and the making of snow angels. All I could think of was the chance of breaking an ankle on the way to work. The magic of childhood that Wordsworth wrote about is definitely gone from my heart. Like childhood, the years of the economic boom seemed sunny by comparison, especially on Dublin’s southside, described by Ross O’Carroll Kelly as having “a hot, humid climate, not unlike that of the Cayman Islands, with whom southsiders share a natural affinity”.
I’m thinking in particular of a time, back in 2006, when Seán Dunne was putting together his grandiose plans for the Jurys site in Ballsbridge, so roundly rejected last week by the planning board. I dug out the architects’ drawings from the bottom of a heap under my desk and yes, there it was: sunshine, flooding the imagined plazas and courtyards and bouncing off the glass of towering apartment blocks. Pert-breasted women strolling around in T-shirts and sun glasses. Even the underground shopping mall appeared to have an abundance of sunlight spilling in via a mini Eden project jutting up at ground level, filled with palms, orchids and cacti.
The central piazza, with 14- and 15-storey buildings all around, had the baked ochre look of a Las Vegas resort slumbering in 100 degree heat, with office windows above flung open. Where, one might ask, was the nearest hydration station? How long would it be before the mall below would be populated by Mephisto-wearing pensioners trying to get out of oppressive heat?
On the property developer’s compass, you see, there is no north. Invariably, their computer-generated plans for housing or office schemes are forever drenched in sunshine, no matter what the aspect. High noon type shadows are cast by computer generated people, who are generally in their mid-20s, very attractive, and busy strolling along with jackets over their shoulders, or standing on balconies sipping glasses of wine, looking out over the communal gardens and never at Phase Two, looming 15 feet away. Once a development is complete, the myth of endless summer continues. For instance, the vast majority of balconies built during the boom faced south – even the many that actually looked due north and enjoyed direct sunlight about once a year, Newgrange-style, on June 21st at four in the morning.
Mr Dunne’s sunny corner of Ballsbridge, was, if I remember from the hype, going to attract a whole new kind of buyer to the city. An estate agent working on the concept told me, confidentially, that of the several hundred apartments, many would be snapped up by wealthy foreigners and diplomats. Sheikhs from the Middle East, rich Europeans, Russians even, were being considered as targets. Dublin would be sold to them as an exciting place, promising sophisticated fun and endless capital appreciation.
At the time, Dublin’s city planners endorsed the vision. An Bord Pleanála thought otherwise in its long awaited decision last week but, in any case, the wheel had turned. The heat has long gone out of the market, and Dublin is not likely to attract foreign buyers, much less sheikhs and oligarchs, for quite some time to come.
In fact, according to a report just out from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ireland is now the least attractive city in Europe for property investment, rated half way between “Abysmal” and “Fair” on the chart. What a comedown from the sunny old days.