This month may finally seal the fate of Stack A, the early 19th century warehouse in the Custom House Docks. But will the right decision be made, asks Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
It is now 15 years since finding a new use for Stack A was identified as a "conservation priority" by the original planning scheme for the Custom House Docks. And for most of that time, at least until restoration work got under way last autumn, it remained an eyesore amidst the office blocks of global commerce. Stack A may not be much of a "stack". A long rectangular building just two storeys high, it has nothing like the scale of those massive brick warehouses that surround Liverpool's Albert Dock, anchored now by the Tate Gallery. But it is a protected structure, mainly because of its cast-iron roof structure and brick-vaulted basement.
Were it not for the whim of Charles J Haughey - egged on by Anthony Cronin and Pádraig Ó hUiginn - to locate the Irish Museum of Modern Art in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Stack A might long since have been filled with contemporary art.
Instead, it was left to languish in the doldrums as everyone dithered about its future use.
Hardwicke and British Land, developers of the International Financial Services Centre, had been given an "exclusive option" on Stack A in their master project agreement with the Custom House Docks Development Authority. But it was clearly not a priority for them, unless it could be developed for what's known as "festival shopping".
The building's saline atmosphere made it unsuitable to house the National Museum's decorative arts division, which eventually went to Collins Barracks. Then, it became a prospect for incorporation into financier Dermot Desmond's huge "ecosphere" project. Some four years later, when that project failed to win Government support, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority got around to refurbishing the decaying fabric of Stack A, with an eye to developing it for "a mix of museum, leisure and shopping facilities" to draw people to the Custom House Docks during the day and at night.
Fifteen years ago, under the original planning scheme, Stack A's use was to be "primarily cultural". It was seen as "eminently suitable" for a gallery of modern art, a folk museum or a science museum. What's more, there was provision for a levy of 50p per square foot per annum on IFSC office space to subsidise its running costs.
But since no museum materialised, this levy has been inoperable; it can be applied only after a museum finally opens its doors on the site. In 1997, the Docklands master plan reaffirmed earlier commitments not only to conserve Stack A but to develop it as "a major cultural facility" and visitor attraction.
What it has offered is a historic building, the venue for a banquet in 1856 to celebrate victory in the Crimea War, divided more than half-and-half in favour of a shopping mall; the museum element would occupy a residual 3,160 sq m (34,000 sq ft), tacked on to 3,715 sq m (40,000 sq ft) of retail space.
In addition to the shops, their layout designed by London architects Fitzroy Robinson, a glazed area is proposed extending seven metres (23 ft) along two-thirds of the west front of Stack A, to be filled with bars and restaurants. The glazing is being designed by RFR, Paris-based engineers of the pyramid at the Louvre.
The rather blank triple-gabled front on to the River Liffey would be replaced by a planar-glazed wall, giving the museum element of the scheme some real transparency; indeed, such an alteration was specifically envisaged by the 1987 Custom House Docks Planning Scheme, which saw it as "acceptable and desirable".
According to the plan drawn up by Michael Collins Associates, consultant architects to the DDDA last year, the shopping mall would be internalised, with service corridors between the backs of each shop and the east and west facades. This is being retained, though with the glazed extension making more of George's Dock.
For 15 years, the Discovery group has been seeking to persuade the DDDA, its predecessor and several Government departments that the best possible use for Stack A is an engaging and interactive science museum. "I can't tell you how many trees we have barked up trying to get our message across", said Discovery's dispirited Rose Kevany.
However, there is little indication that the message has been heard. The DDDA never saw a science museum as a viable use for Stack A; quite apart from any reservations of principle, the space it has allocated for museum use is too small to accommodate the sort of science museum that would capture the public imagination.
But there are none so blind as those who will not see, as the old proverb put it, and that is certainly the case with everyone in a position of power who has been dealing with Stack A - not least the Minister for Arts and Heritage and her Department. Taking their cue from the Taoiseach, they favour a Dublin history museum.
Perhaps none of them has visited W5, the science museum in Belfast's successful Odyssey complex. It was designed to "unlock the scientist in everyone" by playing with "hands-on" exhibits that relate scientific concepts to everyday experiences. And for the busloads of children milling around it every day, it is wonderful.
From the mesmerising fire tornado just inside the entrance through floor after floor of interactive exhibition spaces to the working science lab at the top level, W5 is just as engaging as the Cité des Sciences in Paris or the Metropolis science centre in Amsterdam - Renzo Piano's half-submerged "oil tanker" in the harbour.
It is the type of facility that the Discovery campaigners, Rose Kevany and Noo Wallis, have been seeking to secure in Stack A - on the not unreasonable assumption that it would all be available for museum use, as promised as far back as 1987. However truncated in terms of space, they still believe such a use would be viable. Notionally, a science museum has the support of Mary Harney and her department's Office for Science and Technology. Last year, indeed, she announced that £60 million would be allocated for the development of three science museums - in Dublin, Cork and Galway - though there has been little heard of that idea since September 11th.
The DDDA's view is that a science museum would be better housed in a contemporary building, perhaps on the site abortively earmarked for the Abbey Theatre in the Grand Canal Docks. But it has allowed rival projects, including a children's museum and an art museum, to compete with each other in tendering for Stack A.
Or, rather, what's left of it for museum use. The bulk of the building would become a shopping mall for high-quality "niche retailing", catering for male and female fashion, accessories and beauty products with such international brands as Ralph Lauren and Agent Provocateur. That's what people want, as the DDDA sees it.
What type of museum goes with this impulse buyers' paradise is a matter for the Government to decide, via the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. Because all of the submitted proposals are dependent on a capital contribution from the State, and it will be up to Síle de Valera and her advisers to decide which of them is funded.
The frontrunner, with Bertie Ahern's advance imprimatur, is the proposed Museum of Dublin; indeed, it was at Ms de Valera's instigation that a feasibility study for such a facility was commissioned - a wise move, one would have thought, given that there is no evidence that it would be more than a once-off attraction.
If the aim is to develop the Custom House Docks into an "exciting people place", as the first brochure gushed, it needs to have a magnet that will attract people to come back again and again. Only a museum of modern art, a science museum or a children's museum could succeed in doing that; a Dublin history museum would not.
The closure of the Viking Adventure in Temple Bar and the absence of throngs in City Hall or the Civic Museum are cautionary tales in themselves. Bycontrast with the National Gallery's Millennium Wing, a Dublin history museum - however cleverly tricked out - is not the crowd-puller so desperately sought by the DDDA.
Whatever the outcome, it is vital that any alterations to Stack A must be fully reversible - something that was said repeatedly about the gutting of SS Michael and John's Church when it was turned over to the failed Viking Adventure, at a cost in excess of £5 million (€6.35m) to Irish and European taxpayers. That should not happen again.