Developer Esprit seeks permission for 300-bedroom hotel in historic part of Dublin

* Esprit Investments, owned by Jones Engineering founder Eric Kinsella, is seeking permission to build what will be one of Dublin’s biggest hotels on Mount Street, in a historic section of the city centre.

A planning application lodged with Dublin City Council just days ago shows that Esprit intends building a 300-bedroom hotel and apartments on a site bounded by Mount Street Upper, James’s Place East and Herbert Street in central Dublin.

If the plan goes ahead, the hotel would be one of the biggest in the capital, outranking the Shelbourne, which has more than 260 rooms, the Intercontinental in Ballsbridge, with 200-plus rooms, and Hotel Riu Plaza The Gresham, with almost 290 rooms. The Clayton Burlington Hotel is the largest in the city centre, with 502 rooms.

The application seeks permission to demolish existing buildings at 38 to 43 James’s Place East and replace them with a seven-storey hotel. Esprit is also applying to convert 38 to 40 Mount Street Upper from offices to incorporate them into the hotel.

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They will house the hotel entrance and 20 suites. A glazed bridge over a sunken garden will connect them to the new seven-storey structure on James’s Place East. “The hotel will provide for a total of 300 guest rooms,” the application states.

Solicitors LK Shields currently occupy the Mount Street Upper building, but Esprit owns all the properties involved in the project.

Esprit will build 16 apartments varying from one- to four-bedroom at the rear of Mount Street Upper. The developer says it plans an education space on the ground floor within the hotel, which it will donate to Scoil Chaitríona on Baggot Street.

Its proposals also include an “arts/cultural space” and a public park on the corner of Mount Street Upper and Herbert Street.

Esprit’s plans encompass protected 19th-century buildings on Mount Street Upper, close to the landmark Pepper Canister Church, in a historic area officially dubbed the “south Georgian core”.

The plans are likely to attract the attention of groups focused on the preservation of Dublin’s architectural heritage.

Esprit pledged that the development would be “sensitive to the existing site” while materials used would reflect the area’s character and newer buildings including the recently redeveloped ESB headquarters.

It also noted that the sunken garden would serve as a buffer zone to distinguish between the hotel’s Georgian architecture and the newly built element.

Dublin City Council’s planning section website states that Esprit’s application is open to observations from the public until January 15th.

Esprit is currently building Trinity North, an office building on the junction of Townsend and Shaw streets in Dublin that will straddle the intercity and Dart lines that run south from Connolly station, and a logistics park off the M4 motorway.

Previous projects include Waterways House on the capital’s Grand Canal basin. The company has more than 90,000sq m of space under management or in construction.

Esprit has subsidiaries in Spain and the US. Its 2022 accounts valued its investment properties at more than €338 million.

* This article was edited on Thursday, December 14th, 2023

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