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Miriam Lord: Clerys’ reopening felt more like a corporate process designed to draw veil over closure that broke Dublin’s heart

Department store’s abrupt closing, leaving hundreds out of work with only basic redundancy, left a sour taste

Clerys, once Dublin’s Jewel and Darlin’ department store, is opening again soon.

This venerable emporium meant so much to so many people for so many years. Most of us never really realised how much until it was suddenly gone.

Its closure struck a terrible blow to the heart of the capital city. But the manner of that closure broke it.

The overnight shuttering of Clerys almost eight years ago, when hundreds of workers were turfed out of their jobs with no warning, shocked the whole country. Many had been there for decades and, to their sorrow and utter bewilderment, they found themselves out of work with just the basic state redundancy payment to cushion the blow.

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While it may have been the end of an era, for the consortium that purchased Clerys, it was nothing personal. Just business.

The workers fought their corner. It took them a couple of years but in the end they got some redress. After SIPTU objected to planning permission for the redevelopment of the store, an undisclosed financial settlement was reached with the purchasers.

The O’Connell Street facelift could begin and it would take another five years to complete the work.

On Tuesday, the new owners held the softest of soft openings.

In fact, it wasn’t really an opening at all. There wasn’t very much to see, but there were upbeat things to say, favourable moods to mould and fresh images to imprint on a public soured by the abrupt and mean-spirited ending of a much loved Dublin institution.

The “restoration” is being marked by an exhibition in the entrance area of the refurbished store, which is now the centrepiece of Clerys Quarter which include cafes and restaurants, office space and a hotel. It is open to the public from Wednesday January 18th to January 30th and admission is free. It’s a very small exhibition and visitors are not allowed into any other area of the building, although they will be able to see some of the famous centre-staircase between the hoarding on either side.

Still, for some, the chance to step inside those old walls again will be enough. And the material on display is fascinating.

The pre-reopening, end-of-construction phase soft opening proved a big draw for media outlets.

Journalists, photographers and camera crews descended in their droves in the hope of getting a preview of the new Clerys interior, keen to capture the 21st century’s twist on a bygone treasure for the first time. And a bonus was the unveiling of the newly restored Clerys’ clock, with the Lord Mayor of Dublin down to do the honours just after midday.

On hand, along with an impressive turnout of public relations people, were representatives of the new owners, the man who refurbished the clock and some of the craftspeople who worked on the restoration.

But with so little to see inside, it was hard to imagine what the finished product will look like and even harder to reconcile it with the old Clerys.

The media event to mark the end of the construction phase felt more like the start of the deconstruction phase – a corporate process designed to draw a veil over the previous unpleasantness for once and for all.

“What we are creating here is a destination,” said Derek McGrath, CEO of Core Capital. The company bought Clerys from original purchaser Natrium well after the highly fractious sale and closure.

“I fully acknowledge that what happened at the time was handled very poorly. That was the previous owners,” he told us. “We had no involvement with that, we only bought the building in October 2018. We were always very conscious that there was a lot of negativity around it and at the beginning it was our focus to try focus on the positives here.”

He said they are going to “regenerate” the building and “breathe life into it for the next hundred years” and a “vast amount of jobs” will be created by the development. While Core Capital has no part to play in the recruitment of staff, Derek McGrath said it had contacted all the HR departments of the companies in the building and asked them to make sure that people in the local area are “aware of the employment opportunities” available.

A small crowd gathered on the footpath outside for the unveiling of the famous clock. Lord Mayor Caroline Conroy and horologist Philip Stokes appeared on a second-floor balcony (was it outside what used to be the carpets area or the section for ladies with a fuller figure, we wondered?) and pulled the cords to remove the red drapes from around the historic timepiece.

“Oooh!” went the crowd, rapidly followed by a communal “Ah, he-yor!”

“It’s not workin’!” shouted an elderly man. “The clock is slow!” shouted another.

This caused great delight all round followed by further jollity when the newly gold-leafed minute hand began slowly making its way to the correct spot on the dial. “I wonder will it dong on the quarter hour?” asked an onlooker, but it was too cold to wait to find out.

“I came in to see the excitement,” said Mary Rose Moriarty (82) from Stoneybatter, who watched the unveiling from the comfort of the padded seat on her walking aid. “I came in on the bus on me Dolly Trolley,” she added, indicating the little string of battery operated “Valentine” lights twined around the bar at the back of it.

Was it worth her while coming in? “I suppose the only bit of excitement was the Lord Mayor,” she said, a little underwhelmed by the ceremony. But then, unlike the lore around the clock, she never had any assignations under it. “No, never met anyone under it. I often wished I did, though.”

Still, she used to love Clerys and is looking forward to getting inside for a good look around when the time comes. “I went to all the restaurants and that and it was a great shopping experience.”

Back inside, John Crowe (“almost seventy years old”) was getting a lot of attention having barrelled in to see the unveiling after hearing about it on the 6am news. He worked in Clerys for 46 years, starting off as a messenger boy and running errands for the formidable Mrs Guiney who ruled the roost before graduating to the warehouse. He used to bring up her meals to her office and she used to get her meat from Uncle George’s, the butcher in Moore Street while she was very partial to the sausages from Olhausen’s in Talbot Street.

John, who lives in Artane but is originally from Kilkenny, also brought along an old photograph of himself from nearly 40 years ago when he was captain of the Clerys GAA team. He had it in a crumpled Clerys bag. It showed him holding the Kickham Cup after his team won the Dublin department stores league in 1985.

“I think we beat Arnotts in the final. They had a great team but so did Roches Stores. But Guineys was our worst enemy, we always wanted to beat them.”

Did they play soccer too? “Ah no. It was always Gaelic, sure we were all culchies here.”

He remembers the darks days when the store was abruptly closed down. “It was disgraceful. I was a shop steward – it was a very, very hard time. More a shock than anything else.” But for all that, he is delighted to see Clerys opening again. “If it gives employment like the 46 years I got, wouldn’t that be something?”

“What we are creating here is a destination” said Derek McGrath.

Or to be more precise, a destination once again.