Leftover Space

The scourge of wasteland is becoming familiar place across the country as the recession continues to unravel. Plenty has already been spoken on the overbearing land greed and waste that was so abundant; the blight of ghost estates, the irresponsible one-of housing, the large building sites abandoned over night, the west coast ravaged by holiday homes, and the ill considered after-thought approach public spaces. That theme echoed at the weekend as abandoned, empty land at Cherrywood cannot be used for a Luas park-and-ride facility because the lands have been taken over by NAMA. However, with blame being apportioned and the wheels of justice seemingly beginning to turn as Jim Kennedy and four former Fianna Fáil councillors were last week charged with corruption, now is the time to question what is to be done with what has been left over.

In the vacuum left by the Celtic Tiger steam train, creativity is afforded the opportunity to germinate. Last weekend, members of the Duffy and Gerbola circuses called on local authorities to turn disused sites in town centres into traditional village greens, creating performance spaces and funfair and festival areas. Tara Gerbola, who runs Circus Gerbola with her husband, Michael, alludes to the land greed that authorities got caught up in. “Once every town had a village green to host events, but councils began closing them in the property boom and selling them off for development,” she said.

In France and England, village greens are seen as intrinsic to community and are specifically designated for performance events. On Cork Street last week, a disused plot brought the excitement of the circus to the inner-city; this the first time in decades the circus was permitted back into Dublin city centre with Booterstown and Kilmainham the closest it had previously been allowed.
Such initiatives require minimal capital to get them started, consider the increasingly popular urban farming initiatives, they simply need space. But in the instance that capital is available, indeed when it is thrust forward by a property developer with some inclinations of an apparent civic duty and plenty of land to do something with it, the potential becomes much more exciting. ‘The Parlour,’ Harry Crosbie’s civic space in front of the newly developed O2 was last week finally given permission to be built. The project was born out of the recession when original plans, like so much else, were abandoned indefinitely, but then Crosbie isn’t one to resign himself to defeat.

Furthermore, on Tuesday, it was reported that Dublin City Council and the Dublin Port Company were considering a proposal by Crosbie to relocate the city’s cruise ship terminal to a site closer to the heart of the city at the East-Link Bridge, he proposed to soften the area in front of it with paving and trees to allow visitors the opportunity to engage the city better – inevitably through his nearby civic space to where the Luas will take them into the city centre.

Primary objectors to the Parlour were Crosbie’s partners in the O2, Live Nation, who argued that the 100 painted shipping containers used to build it will “mask” up to a third of the O2 creating a “severe” impact on the protected structure. As a temporary development, An Bord Pleanála granted permission on that premise and that it would add to the vitality of the area.

Vitality that most would concur is very much required in that part of the city. The question thus is asked, will it work. As is tradition, Dublin’s epicentre is again drifting east, but its social centre still clings to the O’Connell – Grafton Street spine and tentatively reaches toward the new city in brief flirtations for work or concerts. Crosbie ambitiously expects his new civic space to be used to host small concerts, for showing sport on large screens, political rallies and farmers’ markets. Rather suggestive of the circus families’ village green ideals despite being quite peripheral to the established city centre. He says “It will be a low-cost means of injecting some energy into land that is lying idle.” He expects it to me a “mini-Covent Garden,” however Covent Garden lies between Oxford Street and the Strand in the West-End, in the heart of London, not at its edge.

It remains to be seen if it will work, but Crosbie’s been proven right before. In the run-up to the recent Open House exhibition, Pauline Byrne of Treasury Holdings called for education in the area of civic pride to be increased; “The private realm dominates in this country, civic spaces and things in the public realm are seen as leftover. Civic pride needs to be part of our education,” she said. This, of course, ties in with what the circus families are saying; good public spaces have tended to be scarce in Dublin.

We have seen massive endeavour fall to unfortunate failure at the invariably barren Smithfield Plaza, of which similar to the Parlour had been proposed, and tokenism such as the little known outdoor theatre on the grounds of the civic offices at Wood Quay. There have been successes though, despite some anti-social behaviour, particularly on Eden Quay, the boardwalk is hugely popular, and few may remember Temple Bar Square 20years ago when it was merely an underused car park, not least the booksellers, buskers and al-fresco diners who now frequent it.

Dublin still lacks a Trafalgar Square or Place de la Concorde type place to gather however; the Grand Slam heroes had Dawson Street and the 2002 World Cup heroes, not afforded the open-top bus, were shifted to the Phoenix Park on health and safety grounds. The break in the trees at the GPO on O’Connell Street is an attempt, although meagre one, but then that’s all that really could be made at that location without knocking Ann Summers.

So it has to be said, there’s some merit in what Crosbie’s proposing. Here is a committed capitalist, owning swathes of the emerging part Dublin city, some used, some underused, some regularly used, but by some strange qwerk, his developer greed is veiled in laudings of an altruistic inclination. He has shaped much of the Docklands, but has been wise enough to locate public buildings at critical points. He opened the O2 and the Grand Canal Theatre during a recession and regularly packs both; and he beat Dublin City Council to the erection of the Wheel of Dublin beside the O2 on the site where he had originally planned a U2 museum. It seems Crosbie and the circus families at least concur that entertainment is viable way through the recession.

He was also involved in hiring a Pritzker Prize winning architect to design the National Conference Centre, a seemingly valid approach to a building of such importance, however it is over-scaled and built as an infill building with one questionably interesting facade; its execution will incur debate amongst Dubliners for generations. The hope is that the Parlour will be more than something for Dubliners to talk about, but rather somewhere for Dubliners to gather as city dwellers are sporadically supposed to; it’s only temporary and peripheral but its success could at least encourage other wasteland owners to think a little more imaginatively.