The proposed demolition and renovation of Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green will see the shopping centre’s famous skylit atrium replaced by around 30,000 square metres of office space.

Friday is the deadline for appealing against the planned redevelopment of the iconic Dublin city centre building after it received planning permission late last year.

Meanwhile, a petition calling for the building to be designated a protected structure has now reached over 6,500 signatures.

The €100 million plan would see the class and ornate ironwork façade replaced by a new modern design – with two extra stories added to the top of the building.

Meanwhile, the skylit atrium that welcomes daylight into the entire centre is to be removed to make way for the new floors, which are largely designated as office space.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, journalist and urban planning expert Frank McDonald said he has lodged a 16-page objection to the plans.

“The truth is that an awful lot of people like [Stephen’s Green], judging by the outpouring of posts on social media condemning Dublin City Council's planners for approving this proposed, so-called, rejuvenation plan for the shopping centre – even though the largest single use in the new building would be more than 30,000 square metres of offices stacked up on top of a new shopping mall,” he said.

“You'd really have to ask why on Earth anybody is doing this when there's a growing glut of office space in Dublin that's now lying vacant as a result of the spate of new office blocks completed over the past two years amounting to, I think it was, 240,000 sqm in 2022 and another 220,000 sqm last year.”

The proposed St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre redevelopment. Image: Davy

Mr McDonald said there are “really serious issues” with the architectural treatment of the plan.

“This supposedly sophisticated double-skin glazed facade, harshly angled at the corner of South King Street and Saint Stephens Green West, above an enormous entrance to the shopping mall that would be the same height, if you can imagine this, as the entire structure of the Fusiliers arch across the road,” he said.

“I described it in my appeal as the architectural equivalent of jaws, you know, which would face the top of Grafton Street – which is actually an architectural conservation area.”

"Very familiar landmark"

Mr McDonald said that regardless of what you think of the current building, it has become a “very familiar and distinctive landmark” in the city.

“There are many other ways of rejuvenating the existing shopping centre other than by proposing something that is that that is really seriously over-scaled for the area and that would get rid of some of the more attractive attributes of the existing shopping centre – which includes, of course, the huge expanse of atrium that's skylit and which is so impressive.

“Like, the building that currently stands there has featured on postcards in Dublin and it's become a kind of an emblem of the city.”

Redevelopment

Friday is the deadline for all appeals against the proposed redevelopment.

Once those are lodged the public will be entitled to make submissions based on the appeals up until mid-February.

You can listen back here:

Main image shows the current interior of Stephen's Green Shopping Centre in Dublin, 14-06-2019. Image: Hemis/Alamy