New 117-bedroom hotel at the home of Irish motoring could be open by 2021

The company behind the development of a 117-bedroom hotel on the site incorporating the Royal Irish Automobile Club (RIAC) on Dawson Street in Dublin expects it to open in 2021 if planning permission is secured for the €35 million project.

A division of Tetrarch Capital, a Dublin-based property investor, recently filed for permission to overhaul RIAC’s Dawson Street headquarters first agreed in December 2017.

Tetrarch's scheme covers the buildings at 33 to 36 Dawson Street and a number of properties to the rear. The development will deliver a significant upgrade to RIAC's facilities, including a new members' restaurant, bar, reading room, meeting rooms, offices for the RIAC and Motorsport Ireland, a new location for the club's Guinness Seagrave library and a 61-space car park.

Assuming satisfactory planning permission is obtained, it is envisaged that the RIAC would vacate the club by the end of June 2019, and that redevelopment works would be completed within two years. The building could be operational by 2021.

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The site, located across from Dublin’s Mansion House, would be operated by Tetrarch and use the RIAC brand in its name. A new glazed atrium will house a central courtyard lobby and a shared reception for the new club and the hotel.

An assessment earlier this year of the condition of the RIAC buildings found evidence of dry rot, a need for roof repairs, and substantial movement in some walls.

The plan with the RIAC involves work to Tetrarch's adjacent Dawson Hotel, which comprises 36 bedrooms, a day spa, Sam's Bar and the former La Stampa restaurant.

Founded in 1901 on the day Queen Victoria died, the RIAC is one of the city's oldest private members' club and was founded by those with an interest in the growing sport of "automobilism".

The proposed scheme has been designed by McCauley Daye O'Connell Architects, assisted by Molly Associates Conservation Architects, with Ganley Waters acting as property advisers to the RIAC.