Plan for 61-room hotel near St Stephen’s Green attracts objections

Plans for a new 61-bedroom hotel close to St Stephen’s Green in Dublin are facing local opposition.

Last month, Eamon Waters’s Grafton Residence UC lodged plans for a new eight-storey hotel on a site known as Textile House at Johnson Place and Clarendon Market.

The new hotel would be managed from Mr Waters’s nearby 127-bedroom Grafton Hotel and represent an expansion of his Sretaw Hotel Group.

Mr Waters sold his waste company Beauparc Utilities for €1.3 billion in 2021 and last year bought Textile House after it was put on the market for €6.5 million.

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In a letter supporting the application, group property manager at the Sretaw Hotel group Colm Lydon said the Grafton Hotel is running occupancy levels of 90 per cent-plus for the first six months of the year.

However, in an objection lodged on behalf of the operator of Peter’s Pub at Johnson Place, Paul Keogh Architects told Dublin City Council that the proposal “constitutes a gross overdevelopment of a historic city block”.

[ Eamon Waters seeks to build new 61-room hotel close to St Stephen's Green ]

Mr Keogh said there no justification for the density and height proposed and contended that the height of the building will overshadow sections of Clarendon Street and Chatham Street.

O’Neill Town Planning lodged an objection on behalf of Stock Design Ireland Ltd of South King Street, arguing that the scale and height of the proposed development will lead to wholesale overlooking, overshadowing and overbearing of adjoining properties.

Michael O’Neill said that if the scheme proceeds, the redevelopment potential of the site owned by Stock Design Ireland would be in effect destroyed. He argued that the development in effect ignores all planning objectives and policies of the council and would seriously injure the existing and future amenities of adjoining owners’ properties.

In a submission, the Dublin city planning officer for An Taisce Kevin Duff contended that the scheme would represent an overbearing form of development in this location in Dublin’s south retail core and directly adjacent to protected structures.

Mr Duff said the proposed development would represent an obtrusive element in the streetscape immediately adjacent to an Architectural Conservation Area where the established heights are generally three, four and five storeys and would constitute a random jump in the scale of the street”.

He said: “Having regard to these various likely negative impacts, it is submitted that the proposed development needs to be significantly revised.”