AN TAISCE has accused the developers of a controversial Hilton hotel on the edge of Dublin's College Green of "subverting" the Government's conservation policy and the city development plan.
Describing the project as "monstrous", Mr Michael Smith, of An Taisce's Dublin City Association, said that in 1996 no other city in Europe "would tolerate the destruction and dwarfing of so many of its best buildings in "the interest of private gain".
Making a lengthy submission on the second day of a Bord Pleanala oral hearing on the £35 million project, Mr Smith described it as "the most damaging application" he had dealt with in the past three years because of its bulk, height and "denigration" of listed buildings.
"An Taisce has a principle that demolition of listed buildings should not be contemplated unless a positive case is made to justify their removal," he said. However, the developers had not shown that their scheme would constitute an "exceptional environmental improvement".
He said the scale of the proposed demolitions had been recognised as unacceptable by Dublin Corporation's chief planning officer, Mr Pat McDonnell, who strongly recommended that permission should be refused. But the City Council voted to grant approval, subject to a height reduction.
"Although we do not accept the `if you don't like it, here's an office block' blackmail of the developers, An Taisce acknowledges that this issue must be addressed against the unfortunate backdrop of a permission from the board for a scheme which is less appropriate than the City Council's decision.
Mr Smith said An Taisce would not "deserve to take the opprobrium in the unlikely event that Hilton pulls out and the office scheme proceeds". The economic viability of the College Streets Fleet Street site for a hotel "cannot be assessed without considering the inflexibility of its owner, AIB".
By insisting on retaining 30,000 square feet of offices on the first floor of the hotel, AIB had rebuffed An Taisce's efforts to find a compromise. The bank had not lived up to its sponsor ship of the Better Ireland awards.
Mr Smith said Taisce did not consider Hilton to be so indispensable to Dublin that An Bord Pleanala should "bend over backwards" to facilitate its current plans. The group would come to Dublin in any case because it was in its interests to have a hotel in what is now a tourism "boom town".
The city's heritage was its unique selling point" in tourism terms. "If you were advising Prague, you wouldn't say `knock down your buildings to facilitate tourist growth'. You would say the opposite," he said. Prague would not locate a "monstrous Hilton" in the heart of its historic core.
Mr Smith quoted from a critical article on Dublin in the German newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau, which mentioned Hilton's plans to "destroy" a block of old houses. "What explains such destruction and facadist deceptions? Stupidity? Greed? Indifference?" the author asked.
An Taisce did not accept that all development should rise to the highest in the vicinity. The proposed scheme "drives a coach and horses through the subtle progression of building heights from three storeys on Pearse Street through four on College Street and five on Westmoreland Street".
Though the facades of the red sandstone Scottish Widows building on the corner of College Street, as well as those of Pearl Insurance and the former Provincial Bank headquarters, were being retained, the demolition of other buildings on the site would "detrimentally alter" the grain of the city.
"Dublin is not New York or even London," Mr Smith said. "Its architectural merit derives from a few centrepiece great public buildings and squares and from many smaller scale charming lesser buildings like those whose demolition is proposed" to facilitate the 169 bedroom Hilton hotel scheme.
Mr Arthur Gibney, former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, said the roofscape of the area stretching from O'Connell Street through Westmoreland Street to College Green was so architecturally diverse that it could quite easily absorb the proposed development.
The hearing continues today.
