The redevelopment of the Ilac Centre, upgrading of Moore Street, and major changes planned for O'Connell Street are all helping Henry Street in its fight to regain its place as the shopping heart of Dublin. Rose Doyle reports.

The word from the bustling, energetic, sometimes tumultuous north city centre is that it is having a very good end-of-year trading time. Plans for the area hold the promise of better times to come.

A lot of the new vigour and elan is down to Henry Street coming into its own or becoming again the vibrant place it always was, according to those who know and never gave up on the shopping heart of Dublin 1.

The other fighting words you'll hear on the street from shoppers to coffee drinkers to retailers, investors and planners is that Henry Street is set to wrest the premier street laurel from its historic rival, Grafton Street.

And it's not just in Henry Street that they're being optimistically bullish. Long-term plans for the spirited streets around the city's soaring, central spire are coming together. Over the next few years, there will be a €40 million redevelopment of the Ileac Centre, a major upgrade of Dunnes Stores on Henry Street and radical upgrading of Moore Street, with canopied stalls and facilities for its traders. And Octennial Street's entire surface is to be covered in high quality granite, footpaths doubled in width, 200 new trees planted, a range of newspaper, coffee and public service kiosks placed down the centre and, at the GPO, the building of a central plaza area. There are those who would convincingly hold that Henry Street and environs have always been the popular destination, that Grafton Street has been trading on its history and proximity to St Stephen's Green for longer than has been good for it.

But Henry Street these days has the Spire at its beginning - and prices many shoppers find more competitive than those in Grafton Street.

Pedestrian footfall figures from CB Richard Ellis Gunne for the third quarter of 2003 show Henry and Grafton streets neck-and-neck on Thursday's late shopping nights, with an average of 7,500 persons per hour recorded on both thoroughfares.

Grafton Street is still ahead on Saturday afternoons however, with recorded figures of 20,908 per hour on the southside street and 17,138 per hour on Henry Street.

Clearly, with the city's population heading for the million mark, and an average of 900,000 people traversing the city streets every day (compared to 24,000 in l980) there's a lot to be gained, and a lot to fight for in retailing terms.

Henry Street's lively bid for the role of the street will be greatly helped by the first significant upgrading of the Ilac Centre since it opened in 1981.

The shopping centre, owned by British Land Company and Irish Life, has been granted planning permission by Dublin City Council for a €40 million revamp which will give it a 5,000 sq m extension. Conditions of the planning permission stipulate "landmark entrances" on Parnell and Moore streets, including a three-storey atrium at the Moore Street entrance. The centre will have double-height malls and shopfronts, upgraded customer facilities, curved vaulted ceilings, new terrazzo floors and timber height columns.

Another major change will take place with Dunnes Stores' redevelopment of a new four- storey retail building on Henry Street. This will link across Samsons Lane and directly into the Ilac Centre, where it will become another anchor and will measure some 80,000 sq ft (7,432 sq m).

It will have a foodhall as well as retail areas for textiles and homewares. Dunnes plans to vacate its present store on Moore Mall, so creating four large new units of some 470 sq m (5,059 sq ft) for incoming traders.

Henry Street's cause is being helped too by the recent, and timely, launch of a €1 million marketing campaign, due to run for the next three years and aimed at encouraging Dubliners to reclaim their city.

The campaign and slogan, "Make the City Yours" is the initiative of the Dublin City Business Association - whose retailing members include Clerys, Arnotts, Roches Stores, the Jervis and Ilac centres, Dublin City Council, Dublin Bus and Irish Rail.

Future plans apart, Henry Street has in recent months experienced the revitalising arrival of Zara, the Spanish clothing label trading in the refurbished flagship branch of Roches Stores, an innovation which has had no small impact on the shopping life of Henry Street.

It's been a case of stand-and-grab room only since Zara's doors opened in mid-November, with shoppers abandoning old loyalties for what New Yorker magazine has called "the most devastating retailer in the world". Zara is also the fashion industry's most profitable retailer.

Zara, with 600 stores worldwide, had been having difficulties finding a suitable property in Dublin until Roches Stores expanded and renovated in Henry Street. The Spanish company has admitted it is "testing the water" in Henry Street and will not comment on the possibility of opening further outlets in Ireland. The revamped Roches stores has almost doubled in size, growing from 6,503 sq m (70,000 sq ft) to 12,077 sq m (130,000 sq ft), and adding two new floors.

The Roches Stores makeover has been all embracing, from a completely remade façade of white Techrete to every aspect of an interior which includes a café and juice bar.

Penneys too has revamped its main store and extended it to Parnell Street. Arnotts' ongoing development means that, as well as shops on Henry Street, it has recently bought Independent House, the building from which three national newspaper have been produced for more than a century. Grafton Street's role as style and fashion retail leader hasn't been helped by recent reports indicating it is one of the priciest retail centres in the world. A November survey of the world's highest rent districts for retailers from UK property agent Cushman & Wakefield Healy & Baker showed Grafton Street was a more expensive place to do business than shopping utopias such as the Via Montenapoleone in Milan or Orchard Road in Singapore.

Rents on Grafton Street reached a record high late last year too when the O2 mobile communications company took on the site formerly occupied by Thorntons confectionery shop, paying €6,201 per sq m (€576 per sq ft) in 2005.

Then there's the threat to Grafton Street from the new Dundrum Shopping Centre, due to open next year, with the House of Fraser as its anchor tenant. With an eye to Grafton Street shoppers, the centre's owners have gone for a purpose-built, large scale boutique in the centre which will house a range of high-end fashion brands - an innovation seen as a suburban version of Brown Thomas.

Only time, along with the economy and the performance of Luas in 2004, will tell how it all pans out for shopper and retailer alike.