The regeneration of Dublin's Pearse Street area is moving ahead with the recent opening of a Holiday Inn hotel and with an unusual loft-style apartment development due to be unveiled before the end of the year.
The two adjoining developments are expected to provide an anchor for further urban renewal in an area which has suffered a decline of economic fortunes and de-population for several decades. Trinity College's continuing redevelopment of buildings on Pearse Street and at the rear of its grounds are also helping to change the image of an area which, despite its southside location and its closeness to the city centre, has not seen the same level of urban renewal as in northside areas such as Gardiner Street. The 92-room four-star Holiday Inn, which opened earlier this year, has already become a social focus on the street.
Its marketing manager, Elaine Collins, says there has been a busy lunch and evening drinks trade in its pub-style bar, Ester Keogh's, and a high demand from local businesses for its conference and gym facilities.
The three-storey hotel, which is opposite Widow Scallans pub, also has 65 underground car-parking spaces, a gym, sauna and restaurant.
Ms Collins, says the hotel, which is almost booked out on weekends during the summer, has "given the community a hope that Pearse Street is going to turn around".
While she acknowledges the street's drug treatment clinic has raised the hackles of local traders, she says none of the hotel's guests have experienced any trouble in the area.
The Holiday Inn, which is part of a worldwide franchise operation of about 4,500 hotels, is owned by two US businessmen, Kent Gross and Robinson Callen.
The hotel is adjacent to the 161unit Winter Garden loft-style apartments development, built on the 2.5-acre site of former ESB stores, which is due for completion by the end of the year. Some of the apartments are already occupied.
The timber-floored apartments in the development, which has a central glazed atrium, were sold off the plans within about one week when they went on the market last year.
Agents Hooke & MacDonald also sold a 60-unit more traditional apartment development at Westland Square last year, most of which are already occupied.
Between Pearse Street and Sir John Rogerson's Quay are Windmill Lane and The Windmill apartment developments, which have also brought an additional vitality to the area.
Ken MacDonald from Hooke & MacDonald said the completion of the Winter Garden scheme "will bring a lot more vibrancy to the area because some of the shops in the areas were becoming run down and weren't experiencing that much business. So the number of shops and the general activity in the area is going to rise. It's so convenient to the city centre and Trinity and it's got great potential".
The developer of the Winter Gardens scheme, Tony Tyrell, says negotiations with a major international company for the letting of a 50,000 sq ft office premises are currently at an advanced stage.
Betty Ashe, who runs a job centre in St Andrew's Resource Centre on Pearse Street, says local people are "pretty excited because for the first time the community is having a say in regenerating our community".
Ms Ashe, who is also on the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, says recent developments have "really improved the quality of the area because for years there was so much dereliction and office blocks. We would like to see more family accommodation and we want to have a community where people feel they want to integrate into it. We don't want two communities with a faceless one and a living one."
