Sea-theme park to blossom on gardens site

"As close as you can get to poetry in the design of a coastal park" is how Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has described the redevelopment plan for the former Longford Gardens and Tennis Club at Seapoint.

Under an ambitious, £390,000 plan the council intends to create a marine-themed park between Seapoint Avenue and the DART line on land which was once the front gardens of 25 Victorian houses at Longford Terrace.

"These poetic and artistic influences" are to be commemorated in motifs depicting sea nymphs and gods such as Neptune, which will be featured at the entrance to the park close to Salthill railway station.

According to Mr Aidan J. Ffrench, the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown senior landscape architect, the park will also feature a maritime playground, the layout of which will also be based on sea legends, pathways using wavy, serpentine alignments edged with driftwood and washed boulders, and steel railings along the DART line in the shape of waves, sea horses or sails.

Hard surfaces are to be decorated in sea shells with a colour scheme based on marine colours.

The park will also feature a redesigned viewing platform on high ground by Seapoint Avenue, a grass amphitheatre and performance space, oriental and marine gardens and depictions commemorating the sinking of the ship Rochdale in 1807.

While he acknowledges that the park is also to accommodate an additional 100 car-parking spaces for Salthill DART station, Mr Ffrench is adamant that car-parking is not the motivating force behind the creation of the park. Instead, he maintains that the project is an exercise in the implementation of the council's policy of sustainable development "arising from the local maritime and architectural history of the Monkstown-Salthill area".

The site once belonged to the householders of Longford Terrace who established a tennis club, adjacent to the old Salthill Hotel. It was acquired by Dun Laoghaire Corporation, by compulsory purchase order, in the early 1980s.

The time-scale for the creation of the park is three years with a phased approach to the work.

The council is requesting funding from the Department of the Environment and Local Government, and according to its master plan the first phase could be as soon as the spring of 1999. The contract for the construction of the car-park is now out to tender, and it is expected to be in use by the early part of next year.