The 'Stab City' epithet may still cling to Limerick like a limpet, but the city once caught in the vice-grip of dereliction and decay is being transformed - elegant and modern buildings are springing up along the waterfront as Limerick turns around to face the Shannon. Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, on the rescue of a shattered city
Something memorable happened 14 years ago at the National Housing Conference, in the dark days when Pee Flynn was Minister for the Environment. For the first time any of the jaded participants could recall, someone spoke animatedly, even enthusiastically, about Limerick - at the time "best seen in a rear-view mirror", as Helen Lucy Burke once quipped. The speaker with a story to tell about the regeneration of this benighted city was Jim Barrett, who was de facto city architect.
Admittedly, he didn't have much to show then, but what he had was a powerful vision of turning Limerick around to face the Shannon, just as Pasqual Maragall was in the process of turning Barcelona around to face the Mediterranean.
Though Barrett was lured to Dublin as City Architect in 1995, his impact on the development of Limerick has been profound. He had spent his time there putting packages together, steering planning applications through the system and then cajoling developers to get on with it. But it's only now, years later, the dramatic results of urban renewal can be seen rising along the river.
Jim Barrett did not act alone, of course. He was supported by successive city managers and by Shannon Development, which had also come to realise its objectives as the development agency for the Mid-West could not be realised if the region's capital remained caught in the vice-grip of dereliction and decay. So it rowed in behind the drive to "rescue the shattered city".
Dick Tobin, who has worked in the city's planning department for more than 20 years, recalls a Basque friend remarking in 1980 that Limerick seemed to have "an awful lot of bombed-out buildings after the war". And though war had nothing to do with it, he had to admit the city was crumbling. What it has witnessed since, especially in recent years, is "an absolute transformation".
Limerick Civic Trust, under the leadership of Denis Leonard, also played a key role in saving individual buildings such as the Bishop's Palace and, more recently, restoring one of the city's finest late-Georgian houses on Pery Square. But in a city that persistently under-values its heritage, Leonard's was hardly a popular cause and there is still a struggle to reverse casual neglect.
But it is the new "face" Limerick presents to the Shannon that has fundamentally changed the city's image. It even includes what is claimed to be the third tallest building in the Republic, an elliptical tower soon to open as the Clarion Hotel, on the basis it is exceeded in height only by Liberty Hall and Cork County Hall. In fact, the tallest tower at George's Quay in Dublin is also higher.
The Clarion, designed by Murray O'Laoire Architects (MOLA) as a landmark for Limerick, falls short on its finish. The form is fine, but the grey, powder-coated metal cladding, with the top four floors rendered in white, melds into the predominantly grey sky. It's as if the developers lost the bottle to make a bolder statement in shimmering glass or were simply too penny-pinching to pay for it.
The tower was also intended to provide a "bookend" for Steamboat Quay, which in itself is a metaphor for Limerick's growing confidence. Its renewal started out at the eastern end with a squat two-storey building, which has since been added to, wedding cake-style, and now consists of an amalgam of apartment buildings rising to six storeys, as well as the grey slab of the Clarion Hotel.
In the past, particularly in the 1970s, Limerick acquired a rash of low-rise, brown brick, flat-roofed structures - all of them physical symbols of how little the city was valued. The worst, by far, was the tacky shopping arcade, known as Spaight's, on Harvey's Quay, which had a car-parking deck at roof level and a brown bus shelter on its Henry Street frontage where people huddled on rainy days.
Though it occupied a whole city block alongside the impressive portico of the Franciscan church, it registered at "zero scale" in urban design terms and had long been a candidate for redevelopment. Shopping and car-parking were bound to feature in the mix, but the scheme now being completed by architects Newenham Mulligan also ingeniously wraps 55 apartments around three sides.
Most of the flats have spectacular views over the Shannon and, not surprisingly, they all sold like hot cakes. With deck or corridor access from generous staircases and two lifts, they are laid out around a relatively narrow courtyard at podium level that features contemporary fountains, loose stone paving, cedar louvres on the rear end of the car-park and an enclosed helical ramp in cobalt blue.
The elegant frontage to Henry Street rises from a polished granite base, with reconstituted stone above, punctuated by a row of pre-cast projections and topped by louvred canopies to ventilate the 600-space, multi-storey car-park. It also has 10-metre-high shop windows, a glass canopy over the ground level and a full-height atrium at the main entrance with three French lighting masts in front.
The six-storey river frontage is less successful. The "legs" of its double-height colonnade are too long for the domestic load it carries between red terracotta end pavilions. Within the line of concrete columns, two staircases lead to a timber-decked balcony and offices on the first floor. Much of the retail space beneath it is likely to be taken by the restaurant chain Milano, in recognition of Limerick's new image.
The scale is perfect, though, given the breadth of the Shannon. On Howley's Quay alongside, it's a shame an earlier mixed-use scheme by Seamus Carr and Associates was held at five storeys, particularly as its riverside elevation is so sophisticated. It's also a pity that Clohessy's Bar denied its location on the ground floor of a contemporary building by faking a traditional interior.
With Dunnes Stores now trading at Harvey's Quay, it is surely just a matter of time before its earlier outlet at the entrance to the city at Sarsfield Bridge is replaced by a building with a more appropriate scale; the existing brown-brick, flat-roofed, two-storey block acknowledges the river and the Shannon Rowing Club (1904) by turning its back on them with service bays.
The nearby Carolan Buildings, another cluster of 1970s dross, is also due to be replaced by another Newenham Mulligan scheme. Across the road, MOLA's Tourist Information Office - an award-winning icon of the "new Limerick" - has been refurbished, though there is still no sign of serious maintenance of the adjoining Arthur's Quay Park; even its litter bins are covered in graffiti.
Further downriver, overlooking Shannon Bridge, a major development opportunity has arisen on the site occupied by St Munchin's House, the grim, late-1960s office block that faces the river with a blank concrete gable, eight storeys high; it was designed by a Czech architect working for local firm Tom Sheehan and Partners who clearly brought all the glamour of Eastern Europe to Limerick.
The railings of the bridge, which was opened by Charles J. Haughey (though the bronze plaque doesn't say when), spew out along the quayside and must be removed if Limerick is to realise its long-standing plan to create a pedestrian walkway along the river. But making space for people means reducing it for traffic and that won't happen until another bridge is built.
Meanwhile, the Limerick Co-Ordination Office - an EU-funded alliance between the City Council, the Civic Trust and the Chamber of Commerce - plans to proceed with a competition-winning scheme by Cheltenham-based architect Nicholas de Jong to transform the city centre into a much more pedestrian-friendly environment, replete with such civic gestures as fountains and public art.
The city's most recent bridge, over the Abbey River, is a blast from the past. For some unaccountable reason, it was given a Baroque treatment, with elaborate standards of bulbous lamps mounted on carved stone brackets bolted to red-brick walls, when it should have been contemporary. It also hits Merchants Quay at a high level, turning the footpaths there into partial canyons.
There is little evidence of an urban design framework for the new road that links it with Thomond Bridge beside King John's Castle as it is lined with nothing but stone-faced walls. Castle Lane, Shannon Development's €5 million quasi-historical pastiche of Limerick's architectural heritage, opened with great fanfare in 1998; but the mega-pub at the heart of it ran into difficulties and has now been leased to a private operator.
MOLA's controversial modernist visitor centre at the castle, survives, however, even if it is still draped in medieval-style banners as though to cover up its alleged effrontery to this historic precinct. And now, the same architects find themselves under attack for adding a zinc-clad attic storey to Limerick's courthouse (1810) in place of a roof removed in the 1950s when the building was gutted.
This €8 million renovation for the Courts Service has been attacked by Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin and president of the Irish Georgian Society. It is difficult to see what he is complaining about. Additions to the original building have been removed, the north elevation reinstated, the walls lime-rendered and the once-gloomy interior brightened up by turning the courtyard into an atrium.
The new attic storey is a bonus. Breakfronted to match the building itself, it has long, letterbox windows with spectacular views to the east and west over the Shannon. Its four louvred "chimneys" are, in fact, outlets for natural ventilation. Overall, it fits in rather well with the roofscape of Burke-Kennedy Doyle's earlier Civic Offices alongside and with the great tower of St Mary's Cathedral to the rear.
Creditably, the scheme included a cantilevered boardwalk around the river edges of the courthouse to continue the existing Shannonside walkway in front of the Civic Offices. This would bring it around to the Potato Market, which, though restored 12 years ago, is used merely as a surface car-park because of fears that any trading there might undermine the more established Milk Market.
The Irish Georgian Society and An Taisce are pressing for a substantial increase in the limited number of protected structures, particularly in Newtown Pery, Limerick's gridiron Georgian core. Walking around, one can see why. PVC windows, makeshift shopfronts and rampant decay have all taken their toll on the most important assembly of Georgian architecture outside Dublin.
Limerick City Council's grim reaper attitude is summed up by its own development plan, which says that portions of Newtown Pery "are in urgent need of redevelopment and must be regarded as beyond preservation in their present form". But instead of consigning them to the skip, surely a scheme of tax incentives could be devised to restore the city's surviving stock of Georgian buildings? By far the most impressive example of what can be achieved is a beautifully-handled warehouse conversion at the corner of Henry Street and Shannon Street by Seamus Carr and Associates for Aidan Brooks, the young Limerick developer who was also responsible for Howley's Quay. After being derelict for years, it now has nine stylish apartments over retail space at street level.
It would be a consolation if all the new architecture in Limerick was as well-considered, but the truth is that it's not.
Cornmarket Square, occupying a whole city block beside the Milk Market, is so banal that it's frightful. A multi-storey car-park with a mega-pub at street level, with some apartments and offices overhead, it has been implicitly endorsed by RTÉ; the anchor tenant is Lyric FM. But at least Limerick is trying to make more of its assets, even if the results are mixed. A city marina has been installed in front of the old Cus- tom House - now the splendid Hunt Museum - with a new weir to re-open the Abbey River to navigation.
However, the downstream surge from Ardnacrusha can be so intimidatingly strong that few but the most determined sailors are prepared to use it.
The new city development plan has belatedly recognised the need to make some use of the four railway lines that lead into Limerick, starting with a commuter service for Shannon and Ennis. The city's suburban expansion since the 1960s could have been strung out along those lines, but since that would have meant departing from low-density sprawl, it wasn't even considered by the planners.
Discussions are under way with the Harbour Commissioners about redeveloping Limerick Docks, now that the administration of the Shannon Estuary has relocated to Foynes. This would tie in with MOLA's €25 million plan to transform Mary Immaculate College, up the hill, as well as nearby sites owned by the Redemptorists, Limerick's once-fiery preachers, and the former racecourse.
Not to be outdone, Limerick County Council is building a new headquarters costing €14.5 million on a site adjoining the Crescent shopping centre in Dooradoyle. Designed by Bucholz McEvoy, who made their name with Fingal County Hall in Swords, its pièce de résistance - done in collaboration with RFR of Paris - is a curved screen of glass and timber 75 metres long.
Out-of-town, the largest development is the university. UL was the brainchild of Dr Ed Walsh, who conceived it as an American-style campus spreading out through the tree-filled grounds of Plassey House. Its relationship with the city is detached; it is hugely important for Limerick, but not in Limerick. It lacks the close connection with the city that NUI Galway has, for example. Inside its ceremonial entrance, marked by deBlacam and Meagher's soaring masts and a new sculpture by Seán Scully, the landscape is almost manicured and most of the buildings are finished in brown brick and bronze-tinted glazing in a "house style" favoured by Dr Walsh - apart from Ambrose Kelly's Wallmartian orange-brick sports complex, which includes the State's first 50-metre pool.
One of the best things about UL is its student housing, particularly Drumroe Village, which opened last September. Designed by Quinn Savage Smith, it rises to five storeys, makes extensive use of timber cladding and is informally laid out in landscaped grounds and soon to be extended across the river into Co Clare. This has to be the finest student housing in Ireland, or anywhere.
MOLA's Hugh Murray, an early mover and shaker in Limerick's renaissance, admits the "Stab City" epithet still clings to it like a limpet. He thinks the time has come to take a leaf out of the American branding book, so that just as Florida is called the Sunshine State, Limerick's bumper-plates could flag it as "River City".
Or perhaps, to turn the awful epithet on its head, "Fab City".
