Dublin Corporation is about to make its most fateful planning decision: whether to approve plans for the National Conference Centre and the massive high-rise development apparently required to support it, on a pivotal 51-acre site in the Docklands area.
The decision, which must be made by August 3rd, is certain to involve a grant of permission because the corporation regards the NCC as a "must have" project for the city. But there will be numerous conditions aimed at reducing the scale of the ancillary development.
There is enormous anxiety about this £1 billion scheme for Spencer Dock. It is the largest urban development proposal in the history of the State, much larger proportionately than London's Canary Wharf project, with which it has been compared both by critics and supporters.
The Spencer Dock development consortium, headed by Treasury Holdings, insists that no less than 5.5 million square feet (511,000 square metres) of ancillary space, office blocks, apartment buildings, hotels and shopping facilities, is needed to subsidise the conference centre.
Apart from reducing the number of basement car-parking spaces from 7,311 to 6,805 to provide for additional coach-parking, the developers have made no concessions whatever to address the corporation's well-flagged concerns about the nature and scale of the overall scheme.
Indeed, they have warned that the "public planning gain elements", notably the NCC, which is now estimated to cost £105 million, "are contingent on securing the quantum of space" proposed in the planning application originally lodged with the corporation on March 2nd.
The consortium's planning consultants, Frank L. Benson and Partners, emphasised in a letter to the corporation on June 4th that the 5.5 million square feet of ancillary space is required to underpin the provision "largely at private expense" of the NCC and other facilities.
That letter accompanied a vast amount of additional information, including a substantially revised environmental impact statement (EIS), which had been requested by the corporation on April 30th so that the planners could properly assess the application in all its aspects.
Senior corporation planners had already published a set of broad "development principles" for Spencer Dock and were hoping that the developers and their advisers would avail of the further information request to re-examine the proposed scheme in this light.
The planners had also called in an urban design expert, Mr Michael Love, of Arup Associates in London, to advise on the most appropriate form of development at Spencer Dock. But the parameters he suggested were rejected out of hand by the developers and their architects.
And so, despite the submission of another large box full of additional reports, surveys and drawings by the US architects, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, and other professional advisers, the content of the scheme remains almost exactly the same.
The additional information included more than 70 computer-generated perspectives showing what the completed project would look like when viewed from various vantage points. These points had been specified by the corporation to illustrate both close-up and distant views.
Some of these images are "quite devastating", in the words of a senior planner. For example, from the southern end of the "Georgian mile" at Fitzwilliam Place and Lower Leeson Street, the high buildings at Spencer Dock would loom up above the ridge of Holles Street Hospital.
Close-up views illustrate the colossal scale of the scheme, though it must be conceded that much of the low-rise "brownfield" foreground of these views will be redeveloped to a higher scale. The same cannot be said, however, about most of the two-storey houses in the vicinity.
More distant views, designed to gauge its citywide impact from such locations as Dunsink Observatory, Howth Head and Kimmage conjure up a false city centre; anyone not familiar with Dublin's skyline would almost certainly think that Spencer Dock was the heart of the city. The corporation believes that some parts of Dublin could "take" high buildings, and this view is reflected in the new city plan. However, it is only now in the process of commissioning a skyline study to identify precisely where these 21st-century towers might be accommodated.
Five city councillors, Mr Kevin Humphries (Labour), Mr Christy Burke (Sinn Fein), Senator Joe Costello (Labour), Mr Tony Gregory TD (Ind) and Mr Ciaran Cuffe (Greens), are seeking an embargo on further high-rise schemes in Docklands until this study is available.
Insistent banners on a recent protest march by their constituents on both sides of the Liffey featured such slogans as "No High Rise" and "Docklands Not Shadowlands", a reference to the shadows that would inevitably be cast by a proliferation of tall buildings in the area.
A coalition of community groups in Docklands, representing City Quay, East Wall, North Wall, Pearse Street, Ringsend and South Lotts, issued a joint statement last month opposing "the developerled high-rise schemes which are plaguing our area", including Spencer Dock.
Politicians at national level have been extraordinarily silent on the issue, despite the huge scale of the Spencer Dock scheme and its likely impact on the Docklands area and the city in general, both in the sky and on the ground. Yet it directly affects the Taoiseach's own constituency.
Martin Pawley, the noted architecture critic, wrote last week, in an article commissioned by the developers, that Spencer Dock offered Dublin "a model for tomorrow". This is precisely what objectors fear most, that it will create a precedent for yet more high-rise schemes.
The Dublin Docklands Development Authority is also "seriously concerned" about the Spencer Dock scheme on grounds of over-development, poor civic design quality and traffic impacts, though it has welcomed the plan for a conference centre on the CIE-owned site.
Surprisingly, the public transport proposals outlined by CIE in its submission to the corporation make no sense. They envisage creating a "dead-end" underground station as a terminus for an airport rail link and a quite separate high-level bridge connecting to Barrow Street.
Meanwhile, long before the city skyline study has been completed, in fact, by August 3rd, the corporation must make a decision on the developers' planning application. And whatever the content of this decision, it is bound to be appealed to An Bord Pleanala by objectors.
Given the scale of what is being proposed for Spencer Dock, it seems inevitable that the appeals board will spend at least four months, and possibly much longer, dealing with the application. And whatever the board decides, some aggrieved party may then seek a judicial review.
If An Bord Pleanala sanctioned the scheme, a legal challenge could be mounted by the multimillionaire financier, Mr Dermot Desmond, who sees the project as an effort by Treasury Holdings to corner the Dublin office market; he was among the first to lodge an objection with the corporation.
Bord Failte, as the commissioning agency for the conference centre, has taken a back seat while the Spencer Dock development weaves its way through the planning process. Its advisers had concluded that at least four million square feet would be needed to subsidise the project.
Even this is contingent on the developers retaining an EU grant of £25 million towards the capital cost. The grant, first allocated in 1994, was due to expire at the end of next year, but the European Commission is being pressed by the developers to extend it for a further 18 months.
However, given the huge impact of the Spencer Dock development in visual, environmental and traffic terms, one senior official with strong reservations about what is being proposed shook his head sadly and said: "It could be the most expensive EU money we'll ever get."