Sir, – Perhaps you would allow me to clarify some remarks attributed to me in Frank McDonald’s commentary on Temple Bar at 20 (Magazine, July 2nd). I am reported as saying that the ‘mini-bohemia’ everyone recognised as worth saving – colourful, edgy, rough grained and utterly benign – was destroyed by the initiative because grittiness wasn’t part of the agenda, and that, as a result, it was a “total failure”.
For the avoidance of doubt, the failure that I was referring to was the loss of the particular atmosphere and feel of the pre-development core of Temple Bar and the population which gave it that character. Since Temple Bar was redeveloped, we have learned that it is characteristic of urban regeneration projects the world over that well-meant government interventions have unintended effects of this kind on the character of the indigenous population and on the original urban fabric in question.
There are two primary causes of this phenomenon. First, large scale well-designed and code-compliant redevelopment of an urban area will generally be inconsistent with a “low rent portfolio” – as Frank McDonald puts it – of the type maintained by CIÉ in Temple Bar before its redevelopment. Second, the indigenous population tends to be much less taken with membership of the “mini-bohemia” than the charmed outside world might expect. Echoing the Land Leaguers of old, when the government machine rolls in, it turns out that the indigenous residents and traders tend to be a good deal more interested in “the three F’s”, ie fair rents, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale, and not least the latter, than remaining forever as members of a peculiar, albeit affectionately observed, inner city community.
Thus, in the case of Temple Bar, it was not so much that grittiness was deliberately excluded from the agenda but that, despite our noble, and possibly naive, aspirations at the outset, and our best efforts later on, the original grittiness was a casualty of the dynamics of the redevelopment process. In something of an exquisite irony, the victory of the original constituents of the core of Temple Bar in persuading the government to intervene in the area, contained in it a seed of destruction. It turns out that if we really wanted to preserve and enjoy the “mini-bohemia” of the early Temple Bar, the best thing to do was to leave it alone.
This is not at all to suggest that I view the Temple Bar development as a whole in a negative light. We did envisage a “bustling, cultural, residential and small-business precinct that will attract visitors in significant numbers”, and while it did turn out to be something of a “boisterous changeling”, it is by no means without heart, or vibrancy or colour, as your other commentators attested to.
One has to have great sympathy for residents of Temple Bar, including Frank McDonald, whose peace is marred by unlawful and excessive revelling – Leo Enright’s aside that “if you want peace and quiet you should move to the suburbs or the country” is perhaps a little glib – and they are certainly entitled to much better management of the quarter than they get. But as for wistfulness, while it is a long time ago now, and while I may have some regrets, I still like to think that Paddy Teahon, Laura Magahy, Patricia Quinn and I, who made up the original executive directorship of Temple Bar Properties Limited, and the extraordinarily dedicated and committed people who assisted us, both inside and outside the company, and who gave their hearts and souls to the project, left Temple Bar a rather better place than we found it. – Yours, etc,
OWEN HICKEY,
Larchfield Road,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – Cultural buildings in Temple Bar Cultural Trust’s porfolio are described as loss leaders (Magazine, July 2nd). This is misleading.
Project Arts Centre bought its premises on East Essex Street in the 1970s with the assistance of Dublin Corporation. The organisation subsequently transferred the site to Temple Bar Properties in the 1990s in order to access EU capital funding and now pays an annual licence fee to TBCT under a 35-year lease.
Thirty-six years after it first began to operate in the area now known as Temple Bar, Project Arts Centre is thriving.
It is not losing its own money or anyone else’s and continues to contribute value to the social and cultural life of Dublin city. – Yours, etc,