Fans of the Victorian pastiche architecture of Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre – and there are many, if the reaction to its proposed redevelopment is anything to go by – will have to wait a little longer for An Bord Pleanála’s decision on the matter.
The shopping centre, which opened in 1988 and has more than 100 outlets, is controlled by Davy stockbrokers on behalf of its clients. Having paid a reported €175 million for the centre, they want to radically overhaul the building.
Its proposals have not been universally welcomed. Although Stephen’s Green is not a protected structure, it has earned a place in the hearts of many Dubliners, including Frank McDonald, a former environment editor of The Irish Times.
McDonald, who wrote about the shopping centre when it was first opened, once likened its appearance to “a Mississippi riverboat which had somehow become stranded on the edge of St Stephen’s Green without its paddlewheel”.
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But it has since grown on many people, and McDonald seemed to speak for many critics when he lambasted the plans to strip out the wedding-cake style facade of ironwork cladding and the three-storey atrium interior – with the famous clock – writing that he was “aghast at the arrogance of the applicants in this case proposing three additional floors of offices on top of an architecturally generic replacement of the shopping centre itself”.
An Taisce also objected in no less emotive terms, describing the new proposal’s architectural style as “highly generic and anonymous”, and “lacking any resonance with, or expression of, its particular place” in the city.
Dublin City Council concluded differently, granting permission subject to a number of conditions. McDonald and An Taisce appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála.
The board was supposed to have decided the matter by September 23rd, but a backlog of other cases means the decision has been delayed.
A decision on the appeal will now “be determined as soon as practicable”.
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