The developer of a proposed new city-centre hotel in Cork for which planning permission has been overturned by An Bord Pleanála is preparing to submit a new application to Cork Corporation.
Mr Michael O'Donoghue, a Killarney hotelier, has confirmed to The Irish Times that Frank Ennis & Associates has been asked to prepare new plans for the €63.5 million (£50 million) hotel and conference centre in the heart of the city, which had been welcomed widely by tourism and business interests in Cork.
Mr O'Donoghue , the principal partner of Roskfell Investments Ltd, said that having spent years at the preplanning stage and having been granted planning permission by Cork Corporation, he was dismayed by the Bord Pleanála decision.
The planning process in Britain, where he also had hotel interests, was far more streamlined and straightforward, he added.
The board's decision, announced on November 12th, was condemned by the Cork Chamber of Commerce, whose chief executive, Mr Michael Geary, questioned its competence and efficiency. Mr Geary also suggested that An Bord Pleanála's modus operandi should be reviewed by the Government and said it was incredible that 14 months after the local authority had granted planning permission a decision overturning it should be announced.
The uncharacteristic tirade from the chamber summed up the general mood of disbelief in the city that a project which had been teased out over many months of discussion between the developers and the corporation should apparently be lost to the city.
The issue is whether Cork needs a new city-centre hotel and whether one can be built in the historic Cornmarket Street area without dominating it to the point of ruining the open trading style of the wide street and its protected facades, or interfering with the nearby inner-city community.
Cornmarket Street, or the Coal Quay, as it is popularly known in Cork, had more or less been left to its own devices over the years as businesses moved out and in many ways had become a neglected part of the city.
Cork's city manager, Mr Joe Gavin, was in no doubt that a major tourism/leisure project in the area would be the catalyst needed to bring it back to life, but that did not mean that he and his planners were offering the developers carte blanche.
They whittled down the original proposal for the hotel, reducing the number of bedrooms by almost 100 and delayed the project while detailed negotiations were held to fine-tune it to the satisfaction of the City Hall.
The initial planning application was made on September 13th, 1999. It envisaged a 408-bedroom hotel, retail units, conference and leisure centre and a 178-space car-park.
By the time talks had concluded between the corporation's planners and the developers a year later, the proposal was for a 320-bedroom hotel, and the height of the building had been reduced significantly.
It was a process, says Mr Jim O'Donovan, Cork Corporation's director of planning, which required detailed and extensive negotiations as well as compromise. At the end of it, the corporation was convinced the project would be good for Cork, and the overall plan for inner-city renewal which has become one of the main planks of the local authority's urban programme.
Under this programme, parts of historic Cork have been preserved and restored in a sensitive manner, but at the same time have been brought back into the mainstream of the city's commercial life. One of the few remaining major sites within the core area of the city was that at Cornmarket Street on which Mr O'Donoghue proposed to build his hotel.
Formerly a printing works, its redevelopment was seen as one of the most exciting city-centre projects for many years.
However, while the business community and the corporation embraced the proposal with enthusiasm, the Middle Parish Community Association and An Taisce were two of the main objectors.
They expressed concerns about the impact of a large hotel on the area, on how it would impinge on the historic ambience of a much-loved part of Cork, about noise levels at night, overshadowing by such a huge complex and excessive demolition of buildings.
An oral hearing was held to examine the overall development, and the demolition aspect of it was examined in two separate hearings, made necessary because An Taisce had not been notified in time of the first one. Having considered the objections before it for more than a year, An Bord Pleanála finally issued its decision on November 12th.
The development, by reason of its scale, height, bulk and monolithic design, would constitute an obtrusive feature on the skyline of the historic central city area and would be out of character with and injurious to its visual amenities, the board found.
The bulk, scale and extent of the proposal would amount to an overdevelopment of the site and would conflict with the corporation's own City Development Plan and Historic Action Plan, it added. This latter observation, the Chamber of Commerce noted, appeared to diminish the "professionalism and integrity" of the corporation's own planning department.
Although Mr O'Donoghue bemoans the unwieldy planning system in the Republic, the whole process has shown, for better or worse, that public scrutiny of such a major project can be a meaningful exercise.
What it has not done, however, is to take into account the need in Cork for more hotel beds, or show confidence in the corporation's ability to address the problem without compromising the local environment.
Currently, if you describe a circle around Grand Parade, South Mall, Parnell Street, MacCurtain Street area, the largest hotel to be found is Jury's Inn with 133 beds. The Metropole has 113, the Imperial 88 and Morrison's Island 56.
Three other smaller hotels have fewer than 40 bedrooms each, bringing the total number of city-centre hotel beds to 475. This hardly amounts to a glut in the Republic's second city as it prepares to welcome a huge influx of visitors to Cork in 2005 when it will become the European City of Culture.
According to Mr Frank Ennis, the architect responsible for the two previous designs, it may take months before plans can be drawn up that will leave the project viable while taking into account the reservations of the board, An Taisce, the residents and others.