The Tara Towers hotel on the Merrion Road, Dublin 4 will be demolished to make way for another landmark building if a planning application for a 25-storey office and residential building by developers Bernard McNamara and Jerry O'Reilly is successful.
The two developers are planning to build the scheme under the name Radora as part of the second phase of their Elm Park development.
They are also looking to demolish nine buildings on Merrion Road, including Llandaff Terrace and Llandaff House, and St Columcille's House.
The 25-storey over double basement block would reach a height of 100.16 metres (331ft), making it almost twice the height of Liberty Hall in Dublin city centre.
The first nine floors would contain a 156-bedroom hotel with meeting and conference rooms and a restaurant.
The 10th to 25th floors would be residential comprising a range of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments with winter gardens. It is also planned to put a roof garden on the top floor.
This tower element would be interlinked with a landmark building with a sloping roof which would contain a conference centre.
There would also be 918sq m (9,881sq ft) of retail floor space at the ground floor level of the hotel and conference centre.
The overall scheme has been designed by architects Bucholz McEvoy.
Architect Merritt Bucholz says it will be a zero energy building that is designed to generate the energy that it will use.
This will be achieved through the use of wind turbines on the roof, photovoltaic cells in the glass facade (which make electricity from the sun), a combined heat and power unit and grey water recycling technology.
"This is essentially a new quarter of the city and it is very important that the energy demands that it will have are balanced," says Bucholz.
The Elm Park development is being built on a 14.5-acre site acquired by McNamara and O'Reilly from the Sisters of Charity in 2001 for just under €46 million.
McNamara and O'Reilly also bought the Tara Towers Hotel in 2003 from Jurys Doyle for €14.2 million.
