Councillors say they fear loss of public park, as hotel spreads out seating and speakers

On Saturday, just after 5pm, while the sun was still beaming down on the city centre, the sound of smooth contemporary funk drifted over South Great George’s Street.

Its source was a pair of black speakers fixed above the side entrance to the Mercantile Hotel.

The glassy doors to the entrance were wide open, with punters sitting both inside and outside, smiling like they were in a cider commercial, sipping cold drinks under golden rays.

A few of them occupied the tables just inside the hotel’s entrance. But the best spots were the stools organised around a trio of black wooden barrels that the hotel had placed in the stony plaza by the intersection of South Great George’s Street and Dame Lane.

Certainly, the sight of people basking in the sun around repurposed casks in what appeared to be a beer garden seemed like a big improvement.

A few months before, there had been wooden hoardings surrounding the plaza, and it was being used as a construction site for the hotel’s redevelopment.

Only, this isn’t a beer garden. It’s a public pocket park, said independent Councillor Mannix Flynn on Wednesday. 

It’s not a place for the hotel’s customers to be drinking, or for speakers to be playing music. “The premises cannot extend itself into the public domain without a licence,” he said.

It’s fine if the hotel wants to open those doors, Flynn said. “But they can’t let the customers on that space with a drink in hand.”

Councillors were told this was going to be a pocket park late last year, said Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne on Tuesday morning.

“But this is the removal of a public park, replacing it with a space that is some sort of mishmash between that and essentially a smoking area,” she said – which is close to what councillors said last year that they feared was about to happen.

“It’s just a beer garden for the Mercantile,” she said, sounding slightly deflated.

Pat Burke, the chief executive of the Mercantile Group, said on Tuesday that they were finalising their application for a seating licence for a portion of the space, as well as an art installation.

The speakers were installed during the renovations, Burke said, adding that the Mercantile would comply with any and all conditions set if a licence is granted for those too.

A spokesperson for the council did not respond when asked if it would be taking action against the Mercantile for its current use of the space for drinking or the external speakers.

No surprises

Orangeseed Designated Activity Company, which trades as the Mercantile Hotel, Bar and Restaurant, got permission from Dublin City Council to do up the Mercantile Hotel in 2019, with conditions added by An Bord Pleanála in 2020.

It had felt like a nice public space before the wooden hoardings went up as the redevelopment started, said Byrne, the Green Party councillor. “It was so heavily used. It had Mannix [Flynn]’s art installations, you could celebrate the ‘Why Go Bald?’ sign.”

There were colourful benches and bike stands, she said. “It was a nice dwell space to sit, never had any problems or complaints.”

Now, while it technically has new granite benches, complete with flower beds, it doesn’t feel like a place that invites the public to sit down in, she says.

And this didn’t really feel like a shock, she says. “What seems to be a beer garden for the hotel was exactly the concerns I raised in 2024.”

Neither Byrne, nor any of the local councillors in the South East Area of the city seemed elated when this proposal for the new pocket park came before their committee last October.

The council had let the hotel use the site during the redevelopment. But work was wrapping up, and the developer was preparing to return the council’s patch to it.

As part of the planning permission for the revamp, council manager Siobhan Maher said at that meeting, the company was required to restore that site to the council’s specifications. 

“There is a small boundary that does actually belong to the Mercantile,” said Byrne, the Green Party councillor, on Tuesday. But the majority of it was owned by the council, she said.

At the meeting last October, Maher presented the council’s “in-house” designs for this small patch of public land by the hotel’s emergency exit by Dame Lane.

The new designs included a shrubbery, a honey locust tree, stony benches and an art installation overlooking the park, Maher said at the October meeting.

However, in comparison to the colourful space with bike sheds that was there before, Byrne said at the meeting, it seemed sterile. “It’s a bit bland.”

Both Right to Change’s Pat Dunne and Labour’s Fiona Connelly worried that the new version of the space was set to become an extension of the hotel itself.

It looked like it was designed to create a plaza for the hotel, said Dunne. “How are we going to look at a situation if this was to go ahead in the future where hotel security would be telling people to move on, out of our public space?”

It seemed like the council was being asked to give the go-ahead for the hotel to use public space as their front of house, he said. “That would be wrong.”

“The space is absolutely for public use, it is not to be franchised by the hotel or anything like that,” Maher assured them. “The hotel, they’re not going to be able to use it without licensing and all of that, from us.”

Byrne said she wasn’t clear on what councillors were being asked to do. Were they going to approve this? she asked. Was there going to be a public consultation? “Is there any input from the citizens, or is this just a fait d’accompli?”

It was just for councillors to note, and not decide on, Maher said.

An evolving approach to public space

Flynn, the independent councillor, says that right now, the combined issues of punters drinking on the plaza and the speakers installed above the side door aren’t just an infringement on public space. “It’s actually breaking the law.”

It is illegal to consume alcohol on a road or in a public place “within the functional area of the council”, according to the council’s 2008 bye-laws.

Only last week, at the July meeting of the council’s South East Area Committee, he and other councillors were proposing that Gardaí need to tackle the issue of people drinking in public down by the Grand Canal, near the Barge pub on Charlemont Street.

“These areas are becoming pollutants, not unlike Temple Bar, which has a certain amount of management and responsibility,” he said. “These small Temple Bars are propping up all over the place. These are all ad hoc, and the local authority are indifferent here.”

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council did not comment on what arrangements it had in place with the Mercantile Hotel with respect to the outdoor drinking or use of speakers in the pocket park.

Pat Burke of the Mercantile Group said they are finalising an application for a seating licence for a portion of the space. “We are hoping to submit this to the council along with the application for the significant art installation in the coming weeks.”

The external speakers were installed during the renovation phase provisionally and subject to further dialogue with the council, he said. 

“We’re aware of the importance of balancing atmosphere with respect for surrounding uses and we would of course comply fully with any and all conditions set if permission is granted,” he said.

The Mercantile believes the space can support the council’s “evolving approach to public space”, he said “by helping to create a more vibrant, open, safe and people-focused city”.