Opera site in question after Revenue considers future of the office.
Minister for the Office of Public works, Patrick O'Donovan, in a recent interview with Live95FM confirmed that due to a move to remote, blended and hybrid forms of working the original plan for 900 Revenue Commission staff to move from their office in Sarsfield house to offices in the Opera site is now being questioned with the expected need for offices to fall far short of their original plans.
The development of the site is being carried out by Limerick City and County Council through the Limerick 2030 DAC. €170 million in funding for the project has been obtained from the European Investment Bank.
Current plans for the site include 3000 development offices, including a 14 storey tower, a five-storey apart-hotel, retail space, a restaurant/café, a new library and a public square. Previous plans for the site have included 500 student accommodation beds and a large shopping centre.
When the decision was being made in 2016 to move oversight away from the council into the Limerick 2030 DAC to allow the development to proceed without having to get continuous approval from councillors, former councillor Cian Prendiville said “I think it would be a mistake to assume people want a 15-storey office block there. It would also be a mistake if the council spends millions on three big projects – the Opera Centre, the Hanging Gardens and Cleeve’s – and not a single social house is built. Spending millions developing offices in the middle of a housing crisis does not make sense.”
The 3,000 offices proposed for the Opera site are just some of the recent executive office space planned or recently built in Limerick with 400 offices spaces planned for the riverside 1BQ building on the site of the former ESB building, 400 office spaces planned for the Bannatyne mills on the Dock road and 800 spaces in the hanging gardens, another Limerick 2030 development, completed in 2019, where one third of the building is currently advertised as available to let.
About the current turn of fate for the Opera site, Ruairí Fahy, People Before Profit representative for Limerick City North said, “Even when the decision was struck with the revenue commissioners to take on a third of the proposed office space in the Opera site the writing was on the wall for towering executive office blocks, and while the pandemic may have expedited their demise it was already well on its way
“Still, plan after plan was submitted for new office blocks with very little accommodation planned to house the people who would work in them. With the returns from rented office space being so much higher it seems like the interests of the market came before the reality of people’s needs.
“There's still time to call a halt to the current plan and do more for this site than a few soulless towers and a square that will likely be dead after 7PM. The original plans included housing for 500 students, and with students walking out this week in protest to the cost of living and housing crises that plan could be revived.
“If student accommodation isn't suitable due to the location, the council could free up accommodation by building a public housing stock with rents linked to people's incomes which would allow a real solution to mixed living and a chance to revitalise the city centre, and not just during office hours.”
