Reuben Street Aparthotel – Craig O Reilly reports on the recent controversy
Plans have been submitted to Dublin City Council to redevelop a five story building into a sixteen-bedroom aparthotel at Reuben House on Reuben Street in Dublin 8. There are already appartements on the third and fourth floors and now permission is being sought to convert the office space on the first two floors to bedroom suites.
Retail units on the ground floor would be changed to laundry and reception areas.
Plans include eight numbered parking spaces, six numbered biking spaces as well as four additional bicycle spaces in a dedicated parking area.
The reason given for application is that there needs to be accommodation for the new Children’s Hospital for patient’s families to travel from other parts of the country as there is a shortage of aparthotels in the area.
However, in the Irish Independent on the 29th March, Amy Blaney noted:
“In Dublin 8 there are currently 1,888 rooms across 14 tourism accommodation properties, four of which are aparthotels.”
Dublin City Council however, has refused other applications recently for aparthotels. For instance, a proposed development at 92-93 Francis Street and 1-3 Mark’s Alley West, Dublin 8, was refused on the grounds that there was already an over-concentration of tourist and visitor accommodation in the area.
Some pushed back at those proposals on the basis that the buildings in question held historical value and should be renovated instead of demolished, but the refusal on the grounds that more tourist accommodation would have a negative effect is telling that there is a recognition that Dublin 8 has an over-concentration of tourist and visitor accommodation already.
This coincides with an article in the Irish Times on 17th April, where Una Mullally noted that Dublin is losing some of its attraction to tourists due to a lack of ambient spaces:
“Dublin has an ambience issue. This is mostly due to how the connective tissue of the city’s anatomy has been brutalised by corporate gentrification, terrible urban planning and the multifaceted impact of the housing crisis.”
There seems to be an interaction between the needs for housing in rent pressure zones, accommodation for tourists and the lack of green spaces in Dublin City which is having a negative effect on the growth of areas.
Pressure is being put on hotel accommodation to house people in need instead of functioning as tourist accommodation, and it may be that character and distinctness of Dublin City which tourists actually come to see is getting lost with the rise of building more accommodation that may or may not be necessary in other circumstances.
