'Acting the maggot with posters' at the Point Village site is just one of the many ways Harry Crosbie continues to make his mark on Dublin's docklands, writes
GEMMA TIPTON
'I'M NOT A normal guy," rock music promoter, haulier and property developer Harry Crosbie tells me cheerfully when I arrive at his house. And with a vague promise of "coffee later", and a large dose of energetic charm, he ushers me in. It's a breathtaking place, a converted Georgian warehouse, right on the river. It's no wonder that Michael Jackson, when he called in for tea, stayed for hours.
Once upon a time, before Dublin's docklands became what it is, there were more warehouses, both Georgian and Victorian, that could have been similarly transformed into the most stunning places to live. Now they have been demolished, and glass and steel predominate. Slender stone façades are topped by the flimsy balconies of city apartments, and Crosbie's home is an anachronism, but a very, very beautiful one.
It also flies in the face of his belief that the answer to Dublin's problems (or one of them, at least) is density. It is density that will make the infrastructure work, that will make public transport make sense, that will provide urban shopping hubs. Density is, in fact, the key to his current development, Point Village. And Point Village is, he tells me with pride, "the biggest construction job in Ireland". I can't help wondering why that pride isn't tinged with sheer fear. It can't be a comfortable time to try and shift 350 apartments, plus find tenants for shops, cafes and restaurants.
But, Crosbie points out, it can't just grind to a halt either: "this thing is too big to stop, it's an €850 million job, and it can't be turned on and off like a tap. We're building a village," he continues, "and we're determined that that village will have its dry cleaners, shoe makers, its art gallery and artists' studios, its own train station [ the Luas], and that being in our village will be the exact same as being in Sandymount village."
There will be a number of key differences, however. Sandymount does not have a massive music venue in its midst ("completely soundproof", Crosbie promises), nor has Sandymount been designed by those maestros of cool-steel-and-glass-architecture, Scott Tallon and Walker. Equally, Sandymount was tenanted and occupied long before either Celtic Tiger or Economic Downturn were even twinkles in Ireland's eye. "The market has flipped over," Crosbie admits. "So the choice is very much in favour of the user now. It has become a buyers' market. Whereas, a few years ago, we would have been forming an orderly queue of our tenants, now we will be much more civil to these people because there's fewer of them, and we need them more than they need us." This is also why Crosbie appreciates the decision of Dunnes Stores, and Margaret Heffernan in particular, to sign up as anchor tenant for the Village. "They're putting in the biggest and best and sexiest Dunnes in the country," he announces, delighted. "Margaret Heffernan is a great woman altogether."
So too is Loretta Glucksman, according to Crosbie. Glucksman is the chairwoman of the American Ireland Fund, and of Crosbie's Giant Man project, a 100ft tall (seated) figure of a man installed beside The Point. "I saw him in The Netherlands," he says. "He sits, attached to a building, and you go up to the 10th floor, and you enter into his brain . . ." You then continue, down through the body, past the heart, the liver, the reproductive organs, and out - presumably at the toes. Crosbie is partnering the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the medical faculty at Trinity in the project. "It's a big thing," he says, in what is probably the only understatement of our meeting. Rising behind the Giant Man will be Ireland's first skyscraper. Forty storeys tall, and topped by a five-storey structure of stained glass windows by British artist Brian Clarke. This will house a brasserie and a viewing deck, and at night will light up the sky.
Meanwhile, the Point, now renamed The O2, is having a complete make-over, and is being transformed into a 15,000 seat auditorium, with "the biggest proscenium arch in the world. People will be stunned." And what about the smaller Daniel Libeskind-designed theatre a couple of blocks down? "I own that as well," says Crosbie calmly. "And I'm also the chairman of Spencer Dock across the road," he adds, evidently enjoying himself.
The economic downturn with its accompanying headaches isn't too much of a worry, then? "We had this project banked many years ago, and we hadn't any big borrowings when we started. The way we do banking is conservative - while we might take risks and act the maggot with posters, with money we're very conservative." The posters Crosbie is referring to are what got me talking to him in the first place. He has replaced the "coming shortly" board that, for years, let Ireland know when Westlife or Boyzone's next visit would be, with a changing set of posters. These are, in his own words "puzzling, mildly amusing, and sometimes annoying", and with them he has managed to create an advertising enigma not seen since Big Ed Loves Mona.
"But they're not ads," he is quick to point out. Instead, "because it's such a huge job, and because I spent the best part of my life setting it up, I thought I'm going to have a bit of fun with this." The posters have included advance notice that Pope Benedict is coming soon, that Gerry Ryan is to open a chip shop (named Cod Piece), and that Gay Byrne will be the first Village mayor. "It's completely me," says Crosbie. "It's nobody else, and I just put up whatever I fancy." This leads him to muse on what it would be like if all the ad agencies agreed two weeks in the year when every billboard would be similarly non-commercial, and given over to anything funny, quixotic or puzzling instead. "Give ads a holiday," he suggests.
Fun, more than money, is important to him. Things have to be commercial, he insists, but "once you get to a certain point you realise that there's only so much that money can do for you. People who don't have money find it very difficult to understand this. But in fact you quickly reach a point where God gets his own back, where he makes everything ordinary by repetition. Because we deal with rich pop stars, we come across this all the time, we call it 'the ho hum factor'. It's when they're on the private jet and they're saying 'are you telling me this is a Gulf Stream Four and not a Five?'."
Crosbie's position, where he can create an entire new city quarter (although not without planning controversies, and some applications refused along the way), and also have fun with idiosyncratic posters, is, he tells me, hard won. "It's hard, relentless graft," he says. "And I haven't taken the money and run. I could be swanning around a beach in the Bahamas with Russian chicks if I wanted to, but I don't want that." He's also adamant that, whatever the economic climate, he's staying put.
"I only operate within the docks. I don't know anywhere else. And it amuses me to hear of people, who know nothing about property, buying things in Bulgaria. I wouldn't buy something in Donnybrook, because I don't know how Donnybrook works, and I've been doing this for 30 years. I work in streets where I've been working since I was 16 years old. The idea of ordinary people saying they've bought holiday flats in Bulgaria, that is definitely going to end in tears."
So what about those developers who don't like the look of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and have, indeed, taken the money and run? "I think they're sad men. They don't understand that money is only a tiny part of what it takes to be content. You only get out what you put in. And in the end, money on the level we operate is only a scorekeeping mechanism. It's not for spending. Capital and money are different things."
I never get my promised coffee because Crosbie is on to the next thing. "I have a ferocious work ethic," he says, "and confidence to the point of mania. My wife has to hit me with a rolled-up newspaper to stop me. But that's not a bad thing."
• O2 (The Point) is scheduled to reopen in December, possibly with Leonard Cohen. Point Village will be released in phases from 2009.