The shopping spaces in the current St Stephenās Green centre have for a long time been considered too shallow and not suited to the needs of big modern retailers. As a consequence it was being left behind by other shopping centres despite having the prime position at the top of Grafton Street. In addition many of the tenants were on 35 yr leases granted in 1985 and as these ran out the tenants were declining to renew them as the centre was on the slide and the retail space not adequate for modern shoppers. Add to this the fact that the second floor is as useless as tits on a bull and you have a half vacant centre with diminishing rent roll and generally crap tenants. The last decent tenant that went in there was TK Maxx and that was in 1997.
Various owners have tried and failed to make a success of it most notably Irish Life who wanted to put a cinema on the roof to generate footfall in the upper floors but they couldnāt pull it off.
It was actually the brainchild of Robin Power, a Cork developer from back in the day who flew to close to the sun. He once owned the Trocadero in Leicester Square. He ran out of finance trying to build it and Ulster Bank brought in British Land (a venerable London institution who also developed the first phase of the Custom House Docks) to finish it.
As Iāve said before on here, the Irish cinema chain owners deserve a book about them. Maybe Matt Cooper can turn his hand to it, the Dunnes book there was goodā¦
The south core of the city centre not having a cinema is absolute madness.
Anyway, as crap as the units are there, there are still largely occupied. It does still get footfall. I think if the owners just looked to retain the clock look that they could get public support. Thereās a bit of a Poolbeg Towers love to it by some folk but the owners havenāt done a good job with working the public.
I think the new music intro on the Louise Duffy show is not bad. It sort of works because itās a dedicated music show. I re-state that the intro music on the rest of the programming is shit.
Do you think we have a basic responsibility to protect infrastructure in our territory or provide a safe environment for foreign heads of state of government when they visit us? If we abdicate this responsibility are you cool with the US or UK moving in and patrolling our territory?
Iād happily tell foreign heads of state that defence spending is not a priority for us because we have among the lowest threat level in Europe and if they are concerned with that they donāt have to come here on a state visit.
You understand that weāre an island and a small country and our economy is based on being the most open in the world. You donāt see any possible difficulties here?