The National Convention Centre to be built by Spencer Dock International will be one of the most ambitious building projects ever undertaken in the State. The project team behind it is already saying it will be Dublin's answer to the Sydney Opera House.
Not only will the centre contain a conference and exhibition space for 3,000 people, but there will also be two hotels, 140,000 square feet of retail space, 1.3 million square feet of office space, car parking for over 1,500 cars and one million square feet of apartments and houses.
In addition there will be a public park between the Royal Canal and the Spencer Dock area, and Dublin Corporation is committed to building a bridge over the Liffey near the site. It will also be served by several buses and a docklands rail service.
It is anticipated that construction will begin in October. The opening is scheduled for January 1st, 2001.
The building itself will be striking, with a dramatic entry atrium and several escalators visible from the outside. More than 1,000 people will be employed during construction and Spencer Dock says "several hundred", many of them local, will be employed when it comes into operation.
Last night's announcement of the company chosen to build the centre ends a phase in one of the longest running sagas involving a public project in the State's history.
The project has been bedevilled by court challenges, worries about funding, and bitter disputes between the competing consortiums.
While the recommendation in favour of Spencer Dock, made by the Independent Management Board for Product Development set up by Bord Failte, is not expected to go before the Cabinet for another three weeks, most observers expect the project will be approved.
At that stage, fine details will be agreed and construction should start in early October.
It may seem hard to believe that it has taken almost a decade to get this far. When the idea was first proposed in the late 1980s, it was expected that the centre could be built by the early 1990s at worst. But three controversial public processes put paid to that.
The first one came to nothing, while the second in late 1995 was aborted before final adjudication stage, even though the RDS in Ballsbridge was described as the "preferred site".
One of the main reasons offered for this surprising decision was that the RDS, as a quasi-public institution, might qualify for a higher level of EU grant-aid - 75 per cent - than a private sector group.
A formal complaint about that competition was made to the EU Commission by the Carlton Group, which wanted the centre to be built on a derelict site on O'Connell Street. This, the company said, would help to improve the look of the street.
The complaint to the EU Commission prompted the Minister for Tourism and Trade, Dr McDaid, to announce last autumn that another competition would be held.
Potential developers, particularly from abroad, were put off making fresh bids, fearing that there might be a repetition of the earlier fiasco.
Dr McDaid said this third attempt to get the project off the ground would be the last chance the State would get. However, within a few months there was controversy when it was disclosed that Treasury Holdings, which heads the Spencer Dock consortium, was in discussions with CIE to acquire its site on the north docks.
Other groups, including the Canadian company, Moytura Developments, said this was unfair as, they claimed, they were never given a chance to bid for the CIE site. The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, sent a letter to CIE to inform it that any land sale it was considering had to be subject to a tendering process.
In the meantime, the Canadian company threatened legal action against Bord Failte and Dr McDaid.
Eventually five bidders were selected, although Bord Failte kept the names secret as part of an approach it maintained throughout the process.
The unsuccessful bidders are the Anna Livia group, headed by property developer, Mr Sean Dunne, the Office of Public Works, which proposed a site near the Phoenix Park, the RDS, which almost won the last public competition, and a group of property developers behind a project known as the Sonas Centre, which was earmarked for the Phoenix Park Racecourse.
