Dublin City Council in talks to vacate current HQ and turn it into public housing
Dublin City Council (DCC) is in “exclusive talks” to purchase the Camden Yard site on Kevin Street in south Dublin, with a view to moving their headquarters there and turning their current Wood Quay civic offices into public housing.
In a note circulated to councillors this afternoon, DCC chief executive Richard Shakespeare said heads of agreement had been signed for the purchase, which would facilitate a “due diligence” period of 10 weeks.
The acquisition would enable a new civic offices building to be built on the Camden Yard site, along with 300 public homes.
It is not currently clear how much the council is prepared to pay for the site.
Mr Shakespeare said moving the authority’s offices to the new location would also “unlock the potential” for more than 500 public homes on the current civic offices site.
The Camden Yard site is where the old DIT building was located, before the college moved to its existing consolidated campus in Grangegorman and renamed TUD.
On-site college buildings were demolished in 2019 by then-owner Westridge Real Estate, who began redeveloping the site into a mixed-use office and build-to-rent apartment scheme in 2022.
However, construction stalled several years later, before the development was complete. Grant Thornton was subsequently appointed as receivers to the project last year.
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Along with enabling housing delivery, Mr Shakespeare said the prohibitive cost of retrofitting DCC’s existing headquarters is another motivator behind the move, with the cost to meet current climate commitments estimated at between €350m and €400m.
Mr Shakespeare added that the move would enable “modern, sustainable workplaces for staff and improved public services for citizens.”
"Developing modern, energy-efficient accommodation at Camden Yard would significantly reduce our operational emissions while freeing the Wood Quay site for much-needed public housing,” he concluded.
The Camden Yard site was reported by The Currency to be under consideration for acquisition by DCC in recent days, with their existing riverside site controversially developed in the 1980s and 1990s atop an archaeologically-significant Viking settlement.
As chair of DCC’s Housing Committee, Fianna Fáil councillor Deirdre Heney said she would be in favour of the move to Camden Yard.
"If I thought that the city council was going to acquire another potential site to locate its offices and that would free up space for housing, I would be in favour of that,” she said, but emphasised that the development should have a mix of tenures available.
“That would be social, cost-rental and houses that people could purchase themselves at an affordable price.”
Ms Heney said she would also like to see a nod to the Viking heritage of the site, considering its history.
"There’s a large part there [on Wood Quay], it’s a big green dip where people would walk their dogs. A beautiful green space. And I believe none of that was excavated. So I think there’s a huge amount there from Viking Dublin.”
"There’s a huge amount of work to be done on that, and I suppose it would open up the possibility of us having some type of a visitor centre or museum space, because it is of huge value to the city and to Dublin people.”
However, Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan said councillors had been "kept in the dark" about the council's "multi-million spending spree".
"We first heard about this plan in the media. This is no way for the Dublin City Council's chief executive to do business," he said.
Sinn Féin welcomes proposals for more housing in the city centre, he said, but added: "the scraps of information councillors have been given on this major proposal is nowhere near enough to make a judgement."
"We are demanding a full council meeting as soon as possible, next week if possible, to discuss the whole process and hear at first hand the details of this multi million euro plan.
"This is taxpayers' money and we want to hold the Chief Executive to account before any proposal is signed off on."