Fallon & Byrne outlet planned for U2’s hotel site

A protected structure on Dublin's Liffey quays, which was part of plans to expand U2's Clarence Hotel, is to become a new branch of restaurant and grocer Fallon & Byrne.

Dublin City Council has granted permission for Dollard House, a 100-year-old printworks beside the hotel, to be converted into a restaurant, wine bar, shop, and pub and micro-brewery. The development will be anchored by Fallon & Byrne, which already has an outlet on nearby Exchequer Street.

Dollard House, which operated as a printworks from 1886 until the 1980s, was bought by Bono and the Edge in 2005 to facilitate a €150 million revamp of the riverside hotel.

The new hotel, designed by Norman Foster, involved demolition of most of the interior of the hotel and adjoining buildings on the quays, retaining just their facades and constructing a much larger hotel around a dramatic atrium and topped by a flying saucer-style roof, called the skycatcher.

Economic crisis

The plan was granted permission by the council in 2007 and was appealed to An Bord Pleanála, which approved the council’s decision in 2008. However, the economic crisis intervened and the scheme was never realised.

Last year the Clarence Partnership, which by then included financier Derek Quinlan and developer Paddy McKillen as well as the musicians, applied to the council to extend the duration of the planning permission, which was about to expire.

The application was refused on grounds that, due to provisions in the new city development plan, the height of the building at eight storeys now exceeded the maximum height permissible at the location. The company has not lodged a fresh application for the Foster scheme but has made use of several buildings acquired for the hotel’s redevelopment, with the opening of the Workman’s Club, the Bison Bar and a photography gallery, but the Dollard House development will be the largest project to date.

The development will take in the basement, ground, and first floors of the building and will run from Wellington Quay to East Essex Street. The Fallon & Byrne grocery store will be on the ground floor at Wellington Quay. Below the shop will be a wine cellar and cheese-tasting room.

Micro-brewery pub

The first floor will have a restaurant looking on to the river with an open-air courtyard in the centre of the building that will be shared with the micro-brewery pub. The pub will face on to Essex Street and below it, in the basement, the brewing will take place.

Fallon & Byrne went into examinership in 2011 after it became insolvent and unable to pay a €1.4 million tax bill. However, a rescue plan was approved by the High Court in 2012, allowing the company to exit from examinership and continue to trade as a going concern.