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A mockup of the proposed hotel and venue. Harry Crosbie via Gordon Deegan

'People like me don’t give up': Harry Crosbie has plans for 'glass cube' hotel shot down by city council

The Vicar Street owner’s plans for a 4-star 35 bedroom hotel and the ‘Baby Vicar’ venue at Hanover Quay in Dublin 2 were refused by the council.

DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL has refused planning permission to Harry Crosbie’s plans for a 4-star 35 bedroom hotel and the ‘Baby Vicar’ venue at Hanover Quay in Dublin 2.

When lodging the plans earlier this year, Mr Crosbie said that the 200 seater ‘Baby Vicar’ entertainment venue for Dublin’s docklands “will bring light and life to a dark place”.

The hotel and venue was to be housed in a two storey glass box as part of an innovative design by PRC Architecture & Planning where the two level glass cube would ‘oversail’ the protected structure at 9 Hanover Quay.

9 Hanover Quay has been the home of Vicar Street owners, Harry and Rita Crosbie, for the last 30 years and the planning application involves converting the Crosbie home to hospitality and entertainment mixed use.

However, the Council has refused planning permission to Mr Crosbie’s Misery Hill Entertainment Ltd on a number of grounds after a number of locals lodged objections.

The council stated that due to its height, scale, materials, form and historic fabric removal, the proposed development would seriously injure the special architectural character and setting of the Protected Structure and the Conservation Area.

Screenshot 2025-04-17 at 16.47.30 A mockup of the proposed hotel and venue. Harry Crosbie via Gordon Deegan Harry Crosbie via Gordon Deegan

The Council stated that the construction of a two storey extension above the existing historic trusses “is overbearing and does not relate sensitively to the architectural detail, form and character of the original structure, and would conceal its historic form”.

The Council stated that “the proposal is not compatible with the future long term conservation of this historic building and would create an undesirable precedent”.

It added: “Furthermore, the construction of a new basement beneath the Protected Structure and in close proximity to the edge of the historic quay walls and the Grand Canal Dock body of water could seriously injure the integrity of the quay and dock structures”.

The Council found that the proposed works contravened the Dublin City Council Development Plan and “would set an undesirable precedent for similar developments, would devalue property in the vicinity”.

The Council also refused planning permission as the proposed development is reliant on substantial works to the public road to facilitate the development including the excessive removal of controlled on street parking on Hanover Quay.

The council found that “the reduced supply of on street parking would detract from the convenience of road users, would be contrary to the stated policy and would set an undesirable precedent for other similar developments in the area”.

Asked to comment, Mr Crosbie said on Thursday “people like me don’t give up” and said that he intends to examine the grounds for refusal and to lodge revised plans taking into account the reasons refusal.

He said that the planning refusal “is a pity as the area is dying because the large office blocks are sucking the life off the streets here and this little venue would have brought light and energy to the area.”

Mr Crosbie spearheaded the renewal of the docklands area and was behind what is the 3Arena today, the Bord Gais Energy Theatre while he was also a partner in delivering the Convention Centre Dublin (CCD).

Mr Crosbie said that he is currently advancing plans for his planned 185 bedroom Rock and Roll hotel for Vicar Street.

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    Mute Ed Brennan
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    Apr 9th 2023, 9:52 AM

    RIP. A truly dedicated and great, human being.

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    Mute Paul
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    Apr 9th 2023, 10:17 AM

    Why didn’t he go after Stalin? It’s estimated that that dictator was responsible for the mass genocide of in excess of 10 – 15 million men, women and children (including Jews) prior and during WWII.

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    Mute Paul Shepherd
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    Apr 9th 2023, 11:24 AM

    @Paul: because the Soviet Union won the war and were on the side of the good guys. Like North Korea and Iran today, you can pretty much kill your own people at will, it’s only when you start on those outside your borders that anybody wakes up.

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    Mute Allora
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    Apr 9th 2023, 12:39 PM

    @Paul Shepherd: the soviet Union won the war?

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    Mute Karen Delaney
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    Apr 9th 2023, 1:18 PM

    @Allora: originally they had a non-aggression pact with the Nazis but after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR with Operation Barbarossa they changed sides and joined the allied forces. As the allies were the ultimate victors in WW2 Russia is acknowledged as being part of the winning side.

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    Mute Allora
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    Apr 9th 2023, 7:03 PM

    @Karen Delaney: yes thats correct but the way that that was presented looked as if the soviets won it unilaterally.

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    Mute Fionn Ó Fúraigh
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    Apr 10th 2023, 12:56 AM

    @Paul: he was only 27 at the time to be fair. I think if he did “go after” Stalin as well you probably wouldn’t be happy. There’s no pleasing some people.

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    Mute Morgan Crowe
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    Apr 10th 2023, 9:43 AM

    @Allora: in fairness the soviets counter offensive after the doomed operation Barbarossa was unstoppable.by the time of the Normandy landings the Nazis were incredibly weak and under resourced on that front as Hitler had pulled so many divisions from France to try and stop the soviets.they would have won the war even if the Normandy landings had never happened.

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    Mute Pat Barry
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    Apr 9th 2023, 10:05 AM

    I didn’t know he was that old, watched “Getting away with murder(s)” only last night, highly recommended.

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    Mute Karen Delaney
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    Apr 9th 2023, 1:14 PM

    A wonderful man who talked the talk and walked the walk. His determination to bring those involved in the horrific Nazi crimes should be a lesson to all involved in prosecuting crime. RIP

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    Mute Carrickview
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    Apr 9th 2023, 9:47 AM

    It is perhaps because the issue is so intense when framed as the Holocaust that the majority of readers have turned away yet someone has to demonstrate the ideology which led to the extermination of so many human beings. There is no judge and jury here, just information sharing that the ideology which was behind the actions of an advanced society like Germany still remains within the education system as an achievement-

    ” Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labour in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. Wannsee Conference, 1942

    ” In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.” Charles Darwin, 1862

    I feel sorry for those who died during the invasion, the extermination and fighting on the fields of battle on land, on the sea and in the skies. What can be said for people today who are prepared to maintain the fiction and the sanitised versions of natural selection for the sake of a later science versus religion American variant?

    I hope younger readers already know.

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    Mute Sean Padraig O Brien
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    Apr 9th 2023, 11:01 AM

    @Carrickview: sounds like Palestine

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    Mute honey badger
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    Apr 9th 2023, 11:05 AM

    @Sean Padraig O Brien: They fly the swastika in Palestine, so unfortunately you have a point.

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    Mute TheQueenofHibernia
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    Apr 9th 2023, 12:38 PM

    Alan, your educational achievements are not determined by your adherence to the truth in the Bible. They are determined by your adherence to the lies espoused by Charles Darwin.

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    Mute Carrickview
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    Apr 9th 2023, 4:50 PM

    @TheQueenofHibernia:

    Darwin was forthright however dangerous and his misguided his and those of Wallace were and remain. It is his followers, even to this day, who try to obscure or lie about the actual conviction and try to say it was social Darwinism that was behind the Nazis and their extermination/invasion policies.

    The next time an academic tries to convince you that the Human Race is a social construct or that there is such a thing as social Darwinism, remind them that ‘Favoured Races’ in his main title as an accompanying description of ‘Less Favoured Races’-

    ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ Charles Darwin, 1859

    A less favoured ‘race’ looks like this-

    ” Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: “The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts—and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ‘struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed—and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults.” Charles Darwin, 1871

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    Mute Diaspora'd
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    Apr 10th 2023, 12:39 AM

    @Carrickview: The quotes in your post about prevailing celts and saxons were not written by Charles Darwin. You basically took someone else’s writing and attributed Charles Darwin’s name to it. Cutting and Pasting someone’s else’s words and then putting “-Charles Darwin,1877” at the end.

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    Mute mossy baluck
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    Apr 10th 2023, 12:40 AM

    @Carrickview: if you quote Charles Darwin in an online forum in 2023 you’re absolutely a mentalist.

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    Mute Carrickview
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    Apr 10th 2023, 9:07 AM

    @Diaspora’d:

    It is from ‘The Descent of Man’ and the statement was modified by Darwin. There is an online book and chapter V is where you will find the statement in context.

    Younger people have enough information to now know that natural selection isn’t about evolution as the biological and geological history of the Earth is written by the fossil record in rock strata where older rock show simpler lifeforms. It is an old research area that was hijacked by natural selection where they tried to imply that black complexion humans were closer biologically to gorillas than the Anglo-Saxon ‘race’ -

    “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” — Charles Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man.

    To exterminate a native culture, they first have to be dehumanised and that is what natural selection did. It is how the Nazis proceeded.

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