The developer behind the Mailboat Pier scheme for Dun Laoghaire harbour has told The Irish Times that it would cost in excess of £100 million and was contingent on receiving approval from the harbour company's board.
Mr Terry Devey, accompanied by the architect, Mr Daniel Liebskind, will tomorrow present their plans for the redundant Carlisle Pier to the board and also to the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager, Mr Derek Brady.
If the harbour company gives its approval on September 10th, the deadline it has set for a decision, the Devey Group will then proceed to seek planning permission for the project from the county council later this year.
Mr Devey said he had long had a desire to be involved in an international piece of architecture. After working with Mr Liebskind over the past eight months, he now had "something I'm passionately proud of and willing to fight for".
Although Dublin had a lot of very good "modern" buildings, he did not believe the city yet had a great building of international stature comparable with the Sydney Opera House or the Guggenheim Museum in the Basque city of Bilbao. "A great building needs a great site, because it needs to be visible, and this is a very special site," Mr Devey said, referring to the Carlisle Pier. "The idea is to create an icon for a nation, and my view is that you can't have a small icon."
Noting that there were 73 million people of Irish descent around the world, he said the old mailboat pier was "a symbol of how people left". And although he was uncomfortable with the term "Irish diaspora", that's what it would commemorate.
He said Mr Liebskind, who normally confines his work to public projects, agreed to become involved in Dun Laoghaire because, as a Polish-born Jew, he was struck by "the echoes of Jewish and Irish people spread all over the globe".
Both the developer and his architect see it as a "national-level project" which would also have great significance in establishing an identity for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, a county "cobbled together" from the old borough and part of Co Dublin.
It would be visible from Howth Head to Killiney Hill as well as from Sandymount Strand and, although dominant within the harbour, it would help to revitalise Dun Laoghaire, "a town that has turned its back on the sea", according to Mr Devey.
"Dun Laoghaire has a fantastic harbour, enclosing 250 acres of water, but what is it about? What is its identity?," he asked. "Now that the marina is finished, it needs a dramatic gesture such as this and the kind of leadership to make it happen."
Although Mr Devey accepted that infilling part of the harbour was an issue, the amount of extra land was very small. He was also talking to the Maritime Museum about relocating to the pier and acquiring an old mailboat to moor alongside it.
