KITTY JOYCE, who has run the Cleo Irish clothing shop on Kildare Street in Dublin since 1975, is in despair over what can be done about the derelict building next door to her premises – just 100m or so from the gates of Leinster House.
The building next door, once owned by landlords Ivor and Marie Underwood, has been in “very bad condition” for at least 15 years, when a plumbing leak “came through our wall and saturated our stairs”, Mrs Joyce said.
“Marie Underwood agreed to have our plumber fix it. He came back in to me, as white as a sheet. The wooden floor under his feet was like biscuit from the rot and he was very lucky he didn’t fall into the basement,” she recalled.
At one time, the Oliver Dowling Gallery was located in the Georgian building and Amanda’s nightclub was in the basement. But its fabric deteriorated so much that concrete underpinning had to be installed to support one of its walls.
The building was sold at auction by the Underwoods in 2007 for €3.7 million along with the former Shelbourne Hotel garage next door, with its rare Venetian window, to developer Bernard McNamara and the consortium that bought and refurbished the Shelbourne.
“Everyone viewing it before the auction had to wear a builder’s hard hat and sign a disclaimer form,” Mrs Joyce said. “Afterwards, I got a phone call from an official in the Department of Agriculture saying there was a tree growing out of the roof.
“He could see it from his seventh-floor office across the street and was afraid that it would fall down in a storm. We managed to get someone to cut it out, even though it was on the building next door. But another tree is growing there now.
“All of these buildings are protected structures, so we got on to the city council’s conservation department. A man came out, we showed him photographs of the state of the building next door and he agreed it was in a bad way,” she said.
“A couple of weeks later, we inquired what was going to be done about it, and we were told it was with the council’s lawyers, who were trying to find out who owned the building. Our inquiry was passed on, but no action has been taken.”
In the meantime, Mrs Joyce said, “our basement smells of damp and there are mushrooms growing on the wall. During the flash floods last spring, the wall going downstairs got so wet that the garments we had hanging on it got wet too.”
Because of the recession, “business has been very quiet and we couldn’t afford to bring in an architect to fight for us. We don’t know what’s going to happen next – something needs to be done about this. But it seems there is nobody in charge”.
