As a grand urban project Cork Docklands has certainly had its share of problems. Managed by City Council in lieu of devolving responsibility to a separate authority like the DDDA, the process has been one of slow evolution, as the local authority within their limited powers attempted to stimulate developer interest, steer existing landowners towards considering redevelopment, and keep the project a priority within national capital funding streams, all the while adhering to best-practice in international planning standards. Iconic tasters like the City Quarter Development on Lapps Quay and the Elysian offered appetisers for the banquet that was to come when the area twice the size of the city centre would be redeveloped.
Howard Holdings City Quarter Development on Lapps Quay
By 2008, it looked like the main course was about to be served when a number of large sites were lined up within various stages of the planning process, most notably Howard Holdings Atlantic Quarter that was set to become the lynchpin of the entire project. Gradually the major players had lined up behind the plan. But just as the steel and concrete of these sites was about to turn the ethereal work of the planning authority into something rigid and fixed, the gathering black cloud of recession cleared the playing field and scattered all betters to their proverbial hedges. The Docklands project went from being a question of ‘when’ to again being a question of ‘if’.
One of the biggest problems facing the project was Central Government’s unwillingness to unambiguously commit to funding the infrastructural provision needed for upgrading the waterfront. On the surface, Central Government have always claimed that Cork Docklands is a policy priority with their full support and backing. However, this commitment has yet to translate into budgetary provision making the capital needed available to Cork City Council. Such a scenario continues unabated. Speaking recently about the lack of provision for Cork Docklands within the Government’s infrastructural investment programme, Minister for Education Batt O’ Keeffe suggested that
“There’s no point in me making predictions but the Government is committed to the Cork Docklands. It’s an issue we will be discussing at Cabinet in early September and you can be sure that Micheál Martin and myself will be to the fore ensuring Cork gets its fair share.”
Despite the less than certain assurances of capital investment, developers such as Greg Coughlan of Howard Holdings’ were confident enough in the project to invest millions in assembling sites and enlisting architects and consultants to construct lavish plans and hyperbolic promotional videos.
Artist Impression of Howard Holdings proposed Atlantic Quarter Development
Coughlan is currently facing jail for contempt of court for failing to supply a statement of his assets to investors pursuing him for €28.1 million for loans relating to a Polish development. On the front of the Irish Examiner a few months ago, this news was presented next to that of planning permission being granted (though not funding committed) for two new bridges in the docklands, part of the irony being that Coughlan’s Atlantic Quarter development was one of those set to benefit most from these new river crossings.
Thus it seemed as if Cork Docklands had anchored in a kind of development limbo. The plan had been rolled out to such an extent that it wasn’t going to just disappear into thin air. The Dockland project exists, has been made to exist over the last decade through a few plans and strategies, hundreds of newspaper articles and speeches, countless conversations, negotiations, and schemes, and a couple of prominent developments. At the same time the financial crisis was sucking the Irish property market into a sink hole, the gaping hole in the Irish banks and the staggering levels of vacancy and oversupply putting a more or less abrupt end to new development. It seemed like something as ambitious as the scale of Cork’s Docklands project wouldn’t be enlisting any cranes for a while.
But recently Cork has again begun to rumble with the promise of new projects to replace those that have stalled. In light of the sudden absence of the events centre first intended for Mahon Point and subsequently as part of Atlantic Quarter, Owen O’ Callaghan has recently slated plans to build a 5,000 seat venue in a development on Albert Quay. In the same week as O’ Callaghan’s plans were announced, An Bord Pleanála ruled against Origin Enterprises 11-storey office-based development on Kennedy Quay (Irish Examiner). 
The most extravagant of these plans is Gerry Wycherley’s €750 million planning application to redevelop the Marina Commercial Park (MCP). The proposed development features more than 800 apartments, providing homes for up to 2,230 people, a marina where they can park their boats (you’ve just got to love that feature), a range of community amenities, a visitor and science centre, the Ford Experience, which is expected to attract up to 300,000 visitors annually, and a new central plaza to provide a hub for the community, including a creche and library. The aims are ambitious. As suggested by the Cork Independent, the “planning application aims to transform the 24-acre, MCP into a vibrant, socially inclusive community within the City’s south docklands, where people will live, work and play, creating 1,200 jobs in the process”. An article in the Irish Independent rather grandly suggested that “Cork is to defy the recession by pushing ahead…” with the project.
Artist Impression of Wycherley's plans for MCP
But at the same time these rumblings on the waterfront could be as far away from becoming a reality as Brando’s mumbled dreams of being a contender. Wycherley’s proposal comes with a series of caveats. He lists three factors “outside of [the company’s] control” that need to happen before they can move on the project.
“Firstly, we don’t know how long the planning application will take to process. There is no reason why it wouldn’t get planning permission as we’re compliant with everything but we don’t know how long it will take. Secondly, there is a serious infrastructure deficit at the moment. Centre Park road will have to be raised at least three metres as well as improving transport links between the site and the city centre. Finally, even if the other two were there in the morning, we couldn’t do anything because the market isn’t there. It would be commercial suicide to move on this without the market but we need to have everything ready and in place for when the market turns.”
All in all these conditions are pretty significant ones, which at heart expose how much the property market in Ireland has changed in the last two years. Wycherley is hedging his bets on all counts. The application is essentially suggesting what could happen with the site and certainly not what will happen. It is no longer a case that Government capital expenditure can in any way be assumed to be forthcoming. The Government’s precarious backing of the Cork Docklands project is now even less assured given the chronic hole in the public finances. Just as significant is the fact that there can no longer be assumed that there is a market for commercial and especially residential property in Ireland. In essence Wycherley’s proposal is saying what could happen in an alternative reality where the Irish Government had money and the property boom was still booming. While he is certainly cognisant of these factors, there is still a hint of the blind Celtic Tiger confidence in the way the project is talked up. He suggests that “Obviously, at the moment, the residential market has bombed so we won’t start building the residential part of the project until there is a clear demand and we can move units. But I’m confident that the market will pick up. The demographics are good in that regard”. The rationale behind such good demographic projections, however, remains patently unclear. For Cork City Council the announcement of the project is clearly positive in that it keeps the Docklands within the public eye and provides them with a more tangible bargaining tool to lobby Central Government for capital funding. If the proposal is in line with the planning regulations for the site (which the developer claims it is) they will grant it planning permission. Yet there is something illusory about all of this which begs the question as to what planning permission actually means in an Ireland after NAMA. Clearly from his own admission Wycherley has no intention of starting development on the site immediately, nor in any defined time period.
Perhaps lustrous plans like these are means of looking sharp for upcoming NAMA nuptials, a pretty peacock’s plumage to appease and please the prospective mate. Because in most cases it is now NAMA that hold the power over Ireland’s urban future. For sites to go into development the final say rests not with the developer or with the local authority, but with NAMA. How exactly this new arrangement will pan out will decide a lot about the future of the country.
As for Cork Docklands, the project will undoubtedly soldier on, this latest episode one more in a its storied evolution. While proposals like this one can provide media fodder that keeps Cork’s ambitions of density and sustainability front and centre in a news nation characterised by misery and miasma, it is important not to get caught up again in the tornado of excess that characterised the Celtic Tiger. Cork’s fastidious record of strategic planning may have had the outcome of some developments receiving an unfortunately anti-climatic opening, but this culture should be retained in the face of less optimistic times. What is important now may not be the grand statement but ensuring that when development happens it is to a scale appropriate to encourage sustainable growth.
Cian O’ Callaghan
Ireland after NAMA 
August 30, 2010 at 10:39 am
Great piece Cian, really imformative. Thanks.
August 30, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Thanks Mark.
Cian
August 30, 2010 at 11:57 am
If you think Cork is chaotic. Take a look at what is happening to the docks in Galway?
August 30, 2010 at 3:22 pm
@Derek
Can’t say that Im too familiar with the docklands project in Galway. Might try to take a look if I get a chance.
Cian
August 31, 2010 at 9:08 am
Cian
After reading your article, my initial reaction was to check my pulse and once I realised I was alive and indeed awake I read it again, and second time round I am unsure who is asleep and who is awake.
What is frightening in the article is the underlying philosophy that life can be improved by resuscitating grandiose urban development plans with the exact same celtic tiger philosophy that has brought us to the economic collapse that at the very least offers us a pause to reconsider if the development ideals of the Celtic tiger are the same ideals which we need to move forward as a nation, if the Celtic tiger needs to be resuscitated or needs to die and a new model for national progress be thought up and instated as the blueprint for national recovery.. one that is based upon a new more intellectually, environmentally and socially inclusive ideal. What is frightening in the above article is not so much what is written but rather what is assumed as fact, when in reality the cardinal assumption that development on the scale of the Cork docklands.. is a wonderful thing and a panacea for our social ills, is not a given, but rather highly questionable.. and indeed the same ideals have resulted in the problems we face today and we bequeath to our children.
“a grand urban project the banquet that was to come when the area twice the size of the city centre would be redeveloped.”
There is nothing in the above article which validates it as a positive move for Cork other than the underlying assumption that development is a great thing when it occurs on a massive scale. That the project will involve billions of Euro and that these billions will make everyone happy? It seems that anyone who argues the contrary will still be considered insane despite the 50 billion that is presently being pumped into our banks for their unquestioning adherence to the same underlying philosophy. The article goes even further by stating that the government support for the project should be a given… simply because of the grandness of its scale and the beauty of the models of lovely office blocks and shiny happy people strolling through the new shopping malls… visiting the Ford Centre and parking their yachts in the new marina.
“One of the biggest problems facing the project was Central Government’s unwillingness to unambiguously commit to funding the infrastructural provision needed for upgrading the waterfront”
The government is expected with absolute conviction to support the development and invest in the infrastructure needed to service this development which consists primarily of profit driven enterprises. To my mind profit driven enterprises on this or even small scales are not about social need or inclusion they are about consumption and profit. There is precious little in the article to suggest any justification for national investment in such a project other than the ideal that it will make many people very rich and this of itself is a great thing? Perhaps I a missing something but does the dockland development include a new hospital, a cancer treatment facility, a new university, a shelter for raped and battered women, an alcohol treatment centre.. a drug treatment centre… a reduction in class size for cork school children? Where and what are the social benefits that this massive development will bring? Is it not a clear indication of the motive behind this development when one of its main original investors
“Coughlan is currently facing jail….”
Not only does this development simply revive the ideal of the Tiger in that development is all about profit but as you state yourself with unconcealed disappointment:
“At the same time the financial crisis was sucking the Irish property market into a sink hole, the gaping hole in the Irish banks and the staggering levels of vacancy and oversupply putting a more or less abrupt end to new development. It seemed like something as ambitious as the scale of Cork’s Docklands project wouldn’t be enlisting any cranes for a while.”
But wait the bells of hope still chime…
“But recently Cork has again begun to rumble with the promise of new projects to replace those that have stalled.
Despite the less than certain assurances of capital investment, developers such as Greg Coughlan of Howard Holdings’ were confident enough in the project to invest millions…”
The most extravagant of these plans is Gerry Wycherley’s €750 million planning application to redevelop the Marina Commercial Park (MCP). The proposed development features more than 800 apartments, providing homes for up to 2,230 people, a marina where they can park their boats (you’ve just got to love that feature)
A marina where they can park their boats?
Is this what is meant by the well worn references to social inclusion etc etc ad nausea. Are you for real?
Is this not the same infantile materialist ideology that has resulted in our present social and economic mess? When will we begin to realise that yachts and battery apartment complexes are not the antidote to unhappiness… social or economic.
“As suggested by the Cork Independent, the “planning application aims to transform the 24-acre, MCP into a vibrant, socially inclusive community within the City’s south docklands, where people will live, work and play, creating 1,200 jobs in the process”. An article in the Irish Independent rather grandly suggested that “Cork is to defy the recession by pushing ahead…” with the project.”
How often will we be fooled by the Irish Times mantra of Jobs for paddy… and the ‘beautiful life’ where beautiful people live work and play in these “value engineered” developments that are driven by profit and have little or no interest in improving anything other than their own profit margins.
“Perhaps lustrous plans like these are means of looking sharp for upcoming NAMA nuptials,”
What makes these plans lustrous… is it the usual addition of a library a crèche and a few other social trinkets that are invariably tacked on to all such developments like the sugar coating on a nasty tasting medicine.
“As for Cork Docklands, the project will undoubtedly soldier on,”
The development has been stymied for good reason… who is doing the soldiering? What is the war that this particular solider is fighting and where is the “on” that you would like your metaphorical solider to get to? His yacht?, his battery apartment? His temporary job in building all of these glass boxes?
“What is important now may not be the grand statement but ensuring that when development happens it is to a scale appropriate to encourage sustainable growth.”
What do you mean by sustainable growth when we have 280k empty houses in the country and countless millions of empty square footage of office space… what do you hope to sustain by more offices more malls and more empty apartments? Do you not realise that all of this sustainable concrete plastic glass and the rest.. will come from the environment.. will have a carbon foot print… and most if not all of it is for the sustainable hope of profits for the same developers and failing banks that are bust of facing jail?
“….keeps Cork’s ambitions of density and sustainability front and centre in a news nation characterised by misery and miasma, it is important not to get caught up again in the tornado of excess that characterised the Celtic Tiger.”
What is there in this development that will address the “misery” of our nation other than a re-heated re-hashed version of the Celtic tiger. The Celtic tiger has failed precisely because of the kind of non-sustainable sustainable vision that has brought us to today’s reality check.
Our country Cork Dublin and every county in this country is in desperate need of some new vision.. and new vision means new vision… we must learn from the past and there is nothing in the above article to show that anything new is being proposed or that anything has been learned from the catastrophic failure of these same development ideals.
I for one will loose no sleep if Cork does not get its docklands development, and Celtic tiger cubs will not be able to disembark from their yachts into this Disneyland dream.. that has already proved itself to be a a garish nightmare from which we are yet to awaken.
Suggested reading
Walden Pond By Henry David Thoreau
August 31, 2010 at 10:06 am
@Marcus
You are misinterpreting what I say in the article. I do not suggest that the underlying philosophy of Celtic Tiger urban redevelopment projects is positive. The article mostly suggests that these types of projects can no longer happen under the same conditions and nor should they. The Docklands Strategy does include much in the line of community and social facilities. I am argueing that new types of development should be envisioned to avoid a repeat Celtic Tiger.
Cian
August 31, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Apologies for the misinterpretation Cian.
“I am argueing that new types of development should be envisioned to avoid a repeat Celtic Tiger.”
Where in the piece are these argumnents made… and what is the “new”ness that is being proposed?
M
August 31, 2010 at 1:26 pm
“…it is important not to get caught up again in the tornado of excess that characterised the Celtic Tiger. Cork’s fastidious record of strategic planning may have had the outcome of some developments receiving an unfortunately anti-climatic opening, but this culture should be retained in the face of less optimistic times. What is important now may not be the grand statement but ensuring that when development happens it is to a scale appropriate to encourage sustainable growth.”
August 31, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Thanks for that Cian
Perhaps yourself or some of the erudite contributors to this board might be willing to elaborate upon this notion of “sustainable growth”… what does it mean and how is it different from the “Sustainable growth” that went on in the Celtic tiger years. It would seem that one is only able to determine whether or not growth was indeed sustainable if the econommy collapses, for the sustainable growth of the celtic tiger was sustainable at the time and has only become non sustainable with the benefit of the retrospectrograph. In fact growth was so sustainable that Fingal County council introduced (like many local authorities) the notion of ‘high density housing’ in the midst of the boom in 2004-2005. now it emerges that neither the density nor much of the housing were needed at all.
therefore it would be a great help to council and lay alike if perhaps someone could define what sustainable growth is as the phrase seems a regular addendum to almost all forms of development.
September 1, 2010 at 10:22 am
There are 2 docklands projects in Galway were one to count the station development which is planned to abut the current docks.
Neither is planned by the planning authorities themselves as is the traditional form of planning in Galway.
Galway suffers from a lethal combination of lack of planning , lack of strategy, developers proposing idiotically grandiose plans to fill this gap and then very noisy serial rentacrowd objectors who have never planned anything themselves.
Combine that and you get nothing, reductio ad absurdum.
September 6, 2010 at 9:34 am
The so called Cork docklands are no such thing. The term was dreamed up as a marketing ploy in order to get tax reliefs, subsidies, investor tax breaks and State infrastructural investment.
Look at Ordnance survey maps over the years – no mention of docklands.
At the turn of the 19th century the Cork racecourse was located in the Marina!
It is reasonable to assume that land acquired in the Marina has availed of stamp duty and/or other reliefs. On top of that, the State is being asked to cough up money for bridges and roads, tax breaks for more appartments which we do not need.
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2008/03/20/story58227.asp
December 1, 2010 at 1:55 am
It’s a sorry state of affairs but nonetheless fascinating reading as I knew some of these ‘boys’ when they arrived in London in the 80’s to take advantage of the boom in UK property .
Frank Gormley, Gregg Coughlan and Sean Dunne, all bright, hard working and very enthusiastic and they very quickly rang rings round the London developers with their engaging personalities and brilliant social networking !
They all flourished with the market and later returned home to take advantage of the booming Irish scene when I rather lost track of them .
It seems to me that Irish banks, like many of the City boys in London, became over eager to share in the seemingly never ending spoils and of course with hindsight many of the proposed Irish developments were utterly ludicrous for such a small population . One can blame the banks 100% for being so gullible !
I now recall the wise words of Michael Manning, a low key Cork builder in London who told me many years ago..’All boats float on a rising tide’ !
Lets hope that Ireland and the Irish recover as soon as possible .
December 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Kerrytom.
It is the “noisy, serial rentacrowd objectors” in Galway who have been pushing for the past ten years for a Local Area Plan, or, Masterplan for the Ceannt Station Docks area. Of course we will continue to object if no notice is taken of our concerns. Which are for the public good, and not the pockets of developers whose only interest is to see the public purse pay for their peninsular development. The only for which is to allow 40,000 tonne fuel tankers into Galway Bay. Remember Whiddy and you’ll know why we continue to be concerned.
December 29, 2010 at 10:30 pm
neither of these project will go ahead because the ice cap is melting and those areas are going to sink because of all the extra weight on the contental plate, sorry lads you should get the hell out of there before its to late. when the gap between alaska and russia closes all that water is going to come our way so basicaly we are fucked. sorry to bring you this bad news.
January 5, 2011 at 11:17 am
Amusing Dave. I am sure that you are right and that all this will come to pass in the3 long term. BUt that will not stop these developer types trying in the near term. Quite honestly, in Galway, they have produced no business plan, nor have any of the environmental conserns we have been addressed. Its all pie in the sky. But others will continue to berate us for calling their bluff.
October 24, 2012 at 5:27 pm
I think the docklands should be developed but not by profit driven developer’s who care only about the buck. Of course profit must be made in plans like these otherwise no one would venture into them, but sustainable gains need to be achieved. Apartments, residential properties and commercial properties are they mad! You dont need to be an econominist to know that these plans are completely bias. I would love to meet the person who thought theses development would be vialble even if it was from a profit aspect. Im doing a college project at the moment to propose alternative development for the docklands. Water research purification treatment center is one idea i have so as to give jobs to cork people, which would run college programmes with C.I.T and UCC. clean water will always be needed so its a possible avenue. I would hope developers would start putting core values of sustainability to their development rather than quick returns. The celtic tiger attitude needs to be subdued in my opinion so our country can move forward once again.
July 21, 2015 at 6:54 pm
How is the project now doing? Is there any process or a timetable for developing?
Thanks for some news!
Best regards!