Shop to open in former AIB bank

Retail: The former AIB bank on 64 Grafton Street purchased earlier this year for over €16 million is to be turned into a retail unit.

The Town Partnership has been granted planning permission by Dublin City Council for a change of use of 64 Grafton Street from banking to retail.

The commercial agent who handled the sale, Neil Love, and the project architects, Burke Kennedy Doyle, have remained tight-lipped about the identities of those behind the Town Partnership - although it is rumoured to be a consortium of Cork businessmen - and the type of retail unit that will be opened there.

The building is a protected structure, and one of the conditions of permission is that all of the works must be carried out under the supervision of a conservation expert.

Planning permission also allows a revamp of the ground floor front elevation onto Grafton street and part-ground floor elevation onto Chatham street to a fully-glazed shopfront design. When the Royal Bank of Scotland acquired the building in 1931, it removed the original shop display windows and inserted infill panels of red brick and terracotta, which will now be removed.

They also plan to relocate the front entrance doors on Grafton Street and remove a passenger lift which occupies valuable floor space on the ground floor . The lift will be retained between the first and third floors. A disabled access lift will run between the retail areas in the basement and first floor.

An existing staircase will be removed and replaced. While existing period features will be retained, mid-20th Century alterations will be removed and substituted with modern features "to present a contemporary style rather than a pastiche . . ." say the architects.

The retail area will span the basement, ground and first floors of the four to five-storey building and double frameless glass doors will open onto Grafton Street. In the basement, non-structural partition walls will be removed on toilets and changing rooms to provide enlarged retail space. Projecting bay windows at first floor level over Chatham Street will be removed and replaced with flat windows.

The former AIB bank is a listed building dating from 1890 believed to have been designed by 19th Century architect James Franklin Fuller, for James Lambert, Soap and Candle Manufacturers.

Some of Fuller's most famous works were for the Guinness family and included Ashford Castle, Iveagh House and Farmleigh House.

The Royal Bank of Scotland acquired the building in 1931 and remodelled it. There were further modifications in 1974, and in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the surviving original features are on the upper floors. The existing shop front onto Grafton Street and Chatham Street dates from around 1931.