Council Has “No Interest” in Plan for New Library Proposed as Part of Crumlin Shopping Centre Redevelopment

As part of its plans to redevelop the decrepit and mostly vacant Crumlin Shopping Centre, its owner has proposed including a library.

But last week, this appeared to be unwelcome news to the council – which operates the city libraries.

For years, Dublin City Council has been working on a plan to build a new library to serve Crumlin and Drimnagh. It has a site – which is not at the shopping centre – it has budgeted funds for the project, and there’s design work underway.

But a site notice that went up on the closed-up front door of the shopping centre last week, and a planning application submitted 14 March, both proposing the demolition and redevelopment of the centre – include a plan for a 1,047 sqm “library facility with flexible exhibition/community / arts and cultural multi-function space”.

This proposed shopping-centre library would be about 700m south-west of the existing Dolphin’s Barn library, and 1km north-east of the planned new library at the Ardscoil Éanna site. Right between them.

How did this happen? The shopping centre’s owners “probably went quickly, and kind of didn’t review properly the fact that there was already a plan for the library up the road,” independent Councillor Sophie Nicoullaud said by phone on Monday.

“And then because they have to have some kind of community amenities provision, and they just put a library,” she said. The city development plan says all new developments larger than 10,000 sqm have to provide at least 5 percent of their space for community, arts and culture uses.

Another possibility is that the idea was simply carried over from the last time the owners got planning permission to demolish and redevelop the shopping centre.

Approved in 2010, that plan included “floor space that can be used as a library (1,330sqm)”. Permission for that redevelopment effort expired in 2020 without anything happening.

The owners of the shopping centre did not reply to queries sent Monday asking for more information on their latest plans for a library, including whether they envision operating it privately, outside the council’s system of city libraries.

Proposed Redevelopment

For years, the Crumlin Shopping Centre has been in decline, emptying out, running down. In 2010, the owners got planning permission to redevelop it.

In 2018, there was a little work done on it, raising some local residents’ hopes that redevelopment was actually about to start. It didn’t happen then though.

In mid-February of this year, a council official said they would send inspectors to see if the centre was in bad enough shape to warrant inclusion on the derelict site register.

If that happened, which seemed unlikely at that time, the council would have been able to demand improvements, or even impose a penalty of up to 7 percent of the property’s market value each year.

Then the site notice went up and the planning application went in from Better Value Unlimited Company, which is owned by Isle of Man-registered Green Arch Corporation, both of which companies share directors with Dunnes Stores Unlimited Company.

The planning application proposes demolishing the existing buildings on the site, and building a new 17,000 sqm shopping centre, about 13m high.

Of that, about 10,000 sqm would host an “anchor retail unit”. There would also be a food court, cafe, gym – and the library.

The shopping centre’s owners did not respond to a query asking if there was a connection between the council derelict sites section’s plans to inspect the centre, and the submission of the planning application.

Library, What Library?

Last Monday, 13 March, Independents 4 Change Councillor Pat Dunne asked about the new library at a meeting of the council’s South East Area Committee.

“We have agreed that there is a library going in at Franshaw House up the road from the shopping centre,” Dunne said.

Council managers didn’t immediately offer an explanation about what was going on. They said they’d get back to him.

The council’s planned new library for the area at Franshaw House, “will involve the renovation of the two-storey house and the construction of an adjacent new modular public library space of c.800 m2, with landscaped gardens for public use”, said a council spokesperson later.

“DCC Architects are working on preliminary designs and feasibility. We hope to be in a position to lodge a part 8 application in 2023, with building to commence in 2024,” they said. Development levies – payments made by developers when they build something – have been allocated to fund the project, they said.

A couple of days after Dunne asked about the shopping-centre library, Nicoullaud, the independent councillor, asked council managers at a meeting of another committee, the South Central Area Committee, about the plan for a library at the shopping centre too.

She too pointed to existing council plans for the Franshaw House site. “As we all know, there’s a plan for the library that’s agreed in the capital projects, and as well it seems to be at design stage, at the old school next to the funeral home,” she said.

“And so now on this planning application, there’s a talk about a library so it’s quite confusing and a bit worrying. So if we could have any clarification on that please,” she said.

This time, council managers had an answer.

“I’m aware that that application has gone in, and it states that there’s a library,” said Alan Sherry, a senior executive officer with the council.

“I was only talking to the city librarian only yesterday,” Sherry said. “There’s no change to the plan in relation to the existing plans in the capital programme for our library.”

Derek Kelly, the council’s director of services for the outer city, jumped in too.

“Yeah, just to reiterate what Alan said, I just was trying to tic-tac with Mairead Owens, who’s the city librarian, and she said the same to me – they have no interest in developing a library in the shopping centre site,” Kelly said.

“The libraries division are progressing with their own plans via the City Architects division to develop the library under Ardscoil Eanna site and that’s their current position,” he said.

“So there won’t be a situation where there’ll be two libraries in that area,” he said. “It’ll be one and it’ll be the one we’re developing ourselves.”