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PLANS HAVE BEEN lodged for a €35m development that includes a new 117-bedroom hotel and the redevelopment of the Royal Irish Automobile Club’s private members’ club on Dublin’s Dawson Street.
The firm making the application with Dublin City Council, Miro Hotel 2 Limited is an investment company connected to the owner of the Marker Hotel in Dublin and five-star Powerscourt hotel in Co Wicklow, Tetrarch Capital.
The application is being made after Miro Hotel 2 Ltd purchased the Dawson hotel on Nos 35-36 Dawson Street & Anne’s Lane.
Now together with the RIAC, located on the adjoining site, on Nos 33-34 Dawson Street, both parties are to co-develop both sites to reconfigure the HQ of the RIAC and to create the 117 bedroom hotel.
Established in 1901, the RIAC is a private members’ club and the club currently provides two restaurants, a bar and a members’ reading room along with a substantial library.
The site is located opposite the Mansion House on Dublin’s Dawson Street and the proposal for the RIAC property follows extensive research into potential options for the redevelopment and refurbishment of the RIAC’s buildings.
The redevelopment is intended to guarantee the long-term future of the Club and deliver sustainable, best-in-class facilities for all members of the RIAC.
It is envisaged that the RIAC will vacate the club by the end of June 2019 and that the redevelopment works would be completed within 24 months.
The challenge for the architects, McCauley Daye O’Connell in the scheme was to create a high-quality contemporary hotel which will be branded using the site’s heritage as an inspiration and sensitively reconfigure and enhance the existing RIAC HQ to create a quality design for the 21st century which respects its heritage.
The facilities will include a new members’ restaurant, bar, reading room, meeting rooms, offices for the RIAC and Motorsport Ireland and a new location for the Club’s Guinness Seagrave Library.
In the new hotel, the heritage of the RIAC will inspire the interior design throughout the redevelopment, which will incorporate distinctive and classic images, materials, colours and memorabilia from the automobile world.
A new glazed atrium will house a central courtyard lobby and shared reception for the new Club and hotel, linking the key areas of each facility with lift access to be provided to all areas of the proposed development.
When plans were first announced last December, chairman of The Royal Irish Automobile Club, Arthur Collier said: “This exciting proposal is about future-proofing the Club to ensure that in the long-term we can deliver the quality of facilities that our members expect, and attract significant numbers of new members in future.”
Chief Executive of Tetrarch Capital, Michael McElligott said at the time that along with the members of the RIAC Board and its own design team
“We have worked diligently to create a scheme that will respect the original character of the site while delivering a stunning design and revitalised set of modern facilities for Club members and hotel guests”.
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There is no way in hell that we need THAT many new hotels.
We need houses for actual people.
I live in Dublin 8 and no exaggeration 4 are going up within a 1km radius of me.
@Abbie Cranky: it’s not the government building them! Inanywho it will create jobs.
If we didn’t build more hotels to meet the demand, more people would prob turn to renting out their buy-to-lets by the night on Airbnb, meaning fewer places for long term rentals, exacerbating the problem.
@Abbie Cranky: we actually need more hotels in the city and we also need also need more high density residental builds, both high spec/high rise apartment complexes in strategic locations and less expensive mid/low rise but high density apartments throughout the city.
@Abbie Cranky: so should we build social housing on Dawson street?.as someone else said, where do you think the money comes from to build all these heavily subsidized housing that people are screaming for.
@John: very valid point, but economic realities do not come into the equation for the demand for social housing.
@Abbie Cranky: we obviously haven’t learn out lesson
@Abbie Cranky: If we didn’t need them they wouldn’t build them unless of course there building them as part of a government initiative to help the homeless. That must be it……….
….yeah RIGHT
It’s a positive sign of confidence in our tourist and business economy that more high end accommodation is being produced.
We are all aware of the multiple social problems in our country but the only way to start funding solutions is to create the wealth that provides the resources for those solutions. A socialist utopia simply does not exist.
Our homeless live in hotels and tourists that visit the country stay in houses (air BNB). Not sure what went wrong there!
Sure when the next crash comes we can fill all these new hotels with the new homeless. Win, win for the owners.
Visited Kilkenny this weekend with the family, it was madness, it has officially reached capacity with visitors (ourselves included) that it was not a pleasant experience so we jumped in the cars and got out of Dodge……
Places that are still prefixed with the term
“royal ” in this republic have had their time. West brits can go to their beloved little England if they want to use that disgusting and insulting title
@Marc Power: I would say you are a royal pain in the ass.
@Marc Power: go wrap yourself in the tricolour. That’d really show them.
@Marc Power: yeah, because the RNLI can pi$$ off saving lives and spending €165m a yeR around the Irish Sea doing so. Much more important to drop the R and have another cross agency with awful funding from our baba republic’s government for the boys.
@Marc Power: C
@Marc Power: C
@Marc Power: we have had our own kings in the past don’t forget
Parnell always stayed at a hotel on dawson st when in dublin.
@Sean Conway:
Fascinating.
A beautiful plan. This will be a real addition to the city centre.
Wonderful creativity from that design team for this prime city-centre site; 117 bedrooms, bar, restaurant, reading room, library, etc!
An international design award might be guaranteed if team remembers to incorporate staff living quarters into their masterpiece. Downstairs maybe, digging deeper, below the reading room, above the car park. Nothing too fancy!
Let the good times roll.
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