“Nothing is off the table” when it comes to the future of Wood Quay.
That’s according to Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare, who has described the divisive proposal to move the council’s headquarters from Wood Quay to Camden Yard as a “bold” but "pragmatic" move. Mr Shakespeare explained the idea of moving from Wood Quay emerged last October after a consultants’ report suggested the cost of retrofitting the existing headquarters had risen from an estimated €250 million to €450-500m.
Mr Shakespeare told RTÉ that he didn’t believe that constituted a good use of public money and instead saw an opportunity to provide a new headquarters while also delivering on urban regeneration and housing. It was with this in mind that he proceeded with the acquisition of Camden Yard (the former DIT campus on Kevin Street) at a cost of €90m.
"Wood Quay would be one of our biggest energy emitters. As a public servant, spending €450 million on myself and delivering nothing else, other than a nice spruced up, energy efficient office, didn't seem to me like good public value," he said.
"Will people thank me for spending 250, 350, 450 million [euro] tidying up these offices to bring them up to modern standards? No. Because where's the public value? It'd be seen to be the greatest exercise and self aggrandisation of a workforce, and that's not what we're about.
"We're about a citizen-focused organisation that wants to do the best we can for the people that we're here to serve. We have a housing problem, and we have an urban regeneration problem and this gives us an opportunity to address both of those.”
The history of Dublin City Council at Wood Quay is steeped in controversy. Constructed on an important Viking settlement site, the development of the offices was the subject of protests throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Having officially opened in 1986, many were shocked to learn that the council had begun planning to relocate once again after just 40 years. Although no official plan has been confirmed for the future of Wood Quay, Mr Shakespeare said the site could be repurposed for housing but he said it may make sense to demolish the current offices to achieve that.
The council has estimated that 800 homes could be delivered at Wood Quay but it has yet to determine if this can be done by repurposing the existing office space or by demolishing the civic offices and redeveloping the whole site, which includes an area that has still not been archaeologically excavated.
Mr Shakespeare said this offers the opportunity to “respect the Viking heritage at the site a little bit more than it has been to date.” “If we're able to strip it back and retrofit with housing, retrofit with a museum of some description celebrating the Viking heritage site well, that's the way we'll go,” he said.
He said that over the coming months they will be workshopping the entire site with councillors to “see what opportunities are there.” With €10 million of the council’s budget set aside for the existing buildings, Mr Shakespeare explained this is necessary to allow for any potential emergency works to be carried out over the next three to four years it takes to develop Camden Yard.
Mr Shakespeare justified the move as offering a more suitable space for the council’s headquarters. He said that Kevin Street is “ideally located in terms of public transport.”
“You've got bus corridors, a five minute walk to the Luas station and you know, is this really connected to the centre of the city, Wood Quay? It's not. It might be on the Liffey, but it's far enough down the Liffey that you couldn't call it in the centre,” he said.
Some have taken issue with the way the Camden Yard purchase and proposed move from Wood Quay was handled. Sinn Fein Cllr Daithí Doolan called out Mr Shakespeare for leaving representatives “in the dark,” stating they should have been consulted in advance before such a large purchase was made.
However, Mr Shakespeare justified the purchase as following the correct procedures. A statement from the council said the sensitive, commercially confidential nature of the purchase meant that information could not be shared with all councillors until after agreements had been signed and they entered a ten-week period of due diligence.
Green Party Cllr Ray Cunningham previously spoke with Dublin Live about the carbon assessment overview which revealed the carbon cost of demolishing the existing offices at Wood Quay and building apartments there is over 60-70% higher than the carbon cost of renovating the offices. “The carbon cost isn’t really factored into anyone’s thinking. The Chief Executive and the staff at Wood Quay are looking at their financial budget and nobody here or in government is asking what value we put on carbon costs,” he said.
Work on Camden Yard is expected to begin next year, with the council remaining at Wood Quay in the meantime. They hope to move there by 2030 and potentially have housing developed at Wood Quay by the mid 2030s.
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
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