IMRO Restoration to use Georgian townhouse as HQ

The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) has acquired one of Dublin's most significant 18th century Georgian townhouses for its new headquarters. Purchased for £2.75 million last year, the once splendid Aldborough House stands neglected on Portland Row, in the north east inner city. Currently based in Copyright House, Pembroke Row, off Lower Baggot Street, IMRO is the national body administering performing rights in copyright music in Ireland on behalf of musicians, songwriters, composers and music publishers.

In the last five years IMRO's revenues have doubled and the organisation has outgrown the 1960s Copyright House office block. At present there are 45 full-time staff working with the organisation. Securing high quality contemporary offices for its staff, along with an array of facilities for its members, were the principal demands on new office space. Originally IMRO looked for office space around the city centre but according to Eamon Shackleton, operations manager at IMRO, Aldborough House offered the organisation great potential to expand. The sale of the Pembroke Row building is expected to net around £4.5 million.

Aldborough House was the last great mansion to be built in Dublin during the city's heyday in the second half of the eighteenth century. Recent history has seen the building in state use as a school, a barracks and a postal and telecommunications depot. Little remains of the original features of the house as each occupant over the years adapted the building to their needs.

During the 1980s the building passed into the possession of Eircom (then Telecom Eireann) to be used as a depot. A programme of renovations was carried out from 1987 to 1992 to upgrade and adapt facilities. A report prepared for IMRO by project architects Howley Harrington Architects, finds that: "These latter interventions are particularly unfortunate, being crude in design and not easily reversible in their construction." Aldborough House is in a designated area within Dublin Corporation's largescale redevelopment plan for the north east inner city which seeks to address the social deprivation and environmental dereliction of the area. This designation allows development costs to be offset against profits.

The initial brief to the architects was to create three main areas of accommodation: modern offices, dining and social areas, a small recording studio and a large flexible multi-functional space to facilitate performances and large meetings.

Howley Harrington architect's report found that IMRO's long term needs could be accommodated adequately within the ground and first floors of the main central block of the house, with the addition of mezzanines and a new lift and service core. IMRO wants to restore the former theatre area in the south east wing to use this space for a range of projects.

The restoration will be extensive and costs are expected to run into millions. IMRO is seeking assistance from EU structural funds and local authority backing under the Urban Renewal Scheme.