Skeletal hulk on Dublin’s quays could be finished to accommodate bank’s growing number of staff
NOTHING SEEMS a more apt metaphor for the boom and bust of the property market than the skeletal hulk of an unfinished office block on Dublin’s North Wall Quay – particularly as it was once destined to be the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank.
But now, with extraordinary symmetry, it may end up being completed to provide a new headquarters for the Central Bank, which had spectacularly failed to regulate the banking sector and prevent the development of the “casino culture” that fuelled the boom and led to the bust. There were other ideas about what should happen to the North Wall Quay hulk, including the radical proposal by Dublin-based Mahoney Architecture and the Trees on the Quays group for a “vertical park”, to serve as a new landmark on the Liffey, nurturing a more sustainable future.
“The public outcry against the great burden of debt imposed by the collapse of the Celtic Tiger resonates in this forlorn concrete frame,” the group said last September.
It believed the legacy of ruin “can and must be transformed into one of renaissance and redemption”, rather than have the derelict structure “dressed in glass and metal to become yet another anonymous office building” – perhaps to house another financial institution.
But the Central Bank is neither ordinary nor anonymous. And it is now on the point of making the momentous decision, following negotiations with Nama, of purchasing the site with a view to completing the abandoned half-built edifice as a headquarters for its growing staff of regulators.
Last April The Irish Times reported that this was merely one of the options under consideration, but it is now the only one on the table. There is also concern in the Central Bank that if it doesn’t move quickly, it could be gazumped by others – possibly even by a canny developer looking to “flip” the site.
There isn’t another office block in Dublin large enough to accommodate the bank’s staff of 1,500 – minus those working in the mint in Sandyford. At present they are housed in three locations – the existing headquarters on Dame Street and rented office space on Harcourt Road and Spencer Dock.
But what would happen to the iconic building that Sam Stephenson designed?
“We don’t want to shutter it up, a source said. “Property specialists say there would be no trouble getting tenants for it, or that it could be converted into a hotel in better times.” Either way, it would need complete refurbishment.
Another possibility being considered by the Central Bank would involve retaining a suite of offices there just to maintain a presence in Dame Street, even though North Wall Quay would be the new headquarters. Those occupying a tented encampment on the plaza in front would certainly miss the bank being there.