Dublin City Council considers opening up city centre laneways for people to play cricket

On Talbot Lane, a cobbled alley off Talbot Street, are bright new murals that pay homage to Georgian doorways, Seán O’Casey and the arcade games of Barney’s Amusements at nearby Marlborough Place.

These aren’t a one-off project, said a Dublin City Council spokesperson last week.

The council is finally rolling out its plans to revamp laneways in the north inner-city, as suggested in its 2018 Reimagining Dublin One strategy, the spokesperson said.

“We are in the process of actioning the Dublin 1 lanes strategy,” said the council spokesperson, pointing to Talbot Lane as an example.

The council is also exploring the idea of opening up city-centre laneways for people to play cricket, as is done in Melbourne. “Initial contact has been made with Leinster Cricket to examine a laneways cricket initiative,” said the spokesperson.

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner says that initiative would be ideal for lanes that are closed to the public, like Harbour Court, which runs from Abbey Street to the quays and is set to be gated off after a council vote. “We are starved of inner-city sports spaces,” she says.

Fine Gael Councillor Ray McAdam says that the council should explore all potential ideas to transform city laneways into positive places. “This is the type of outside-the-box thinking that I welcome.”

Cricket time

Brendan Doggett, a council administrative officer, pitched the idea for cricket in the laneways, according to correspondence released in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

He had been speaking to someone from Cricket Ireland, who pointed out how in Australia, some laneways are used for that.

“They’re keen to do something with us and of course we have some beautiful laneways that tick the boxes,” he wrote in March this year and included a link to a story about Harbour Court.

Michael Darragh MacAuley, community sports engagement manager with Dublin City Council, wrote back to say that the council already organises tape ball in Mountjoy Park.

Tape ball – a kind of Pakistani street cricket using a tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape – is popular among Indians and Pakistanis in Dublin, he said. “I’m sure we could run a pilot on it,” said MacAuley.

Horner, the Green Party councillor, says she doesn’t think cricket matches would work in laneways that are open to public access if a hard cricket ball is used, as that could be dangerous.

But for a laneway like Harbour Court, that is going to be closed to the public anyway, it would be an efficient use of city centre space, she says. “It could be a good location for cricket as it is very enclosed.”

Handball could also be played in closed laneways, says Horner. “It’s great to explore the idea of using disused laneways for sports.”

Said McAdam, the Fine Gael councillor: “It’s certainly a novel approach.” The new council should explore all ideas to bring laneways back to life, for positive purposes, he says.

“We need to make sure we have a living, vibrant city centre,” he says. “To my mind we should be willing to look at every option available.

In Toronto, city authorities have greened and planted in a lot of laneways outside of the city centre, says McAdam.

They have upgraded the drainage infrastructure and harvest rainwater, which they use to power wash the streets, he says.

Animating laneways

Plans to revamp city-centre laneways date back more than six years.

In July 2018, Dublin City Council said that it was working on plans to animate five laneways, after architect Seán Harrington drew up an action plan.

The idea was to get businesses that back onto laneways to open up those entrances, and encourage more people to mill around on the smaller back streets.

The laneways selected for transformation were Abbey Cottages, Byrne’s Lane, Coles Lane, Talbot Place and Jervis Lane Upper.

The council is still working on this plan and Talbot Lane is the first of these to be completed, says the council spokesperson. (Dublin City Council is also investing €2.5m to revamp nearby Talbot Street.)

That earlier strategy didn’t mention Harbour Court, the laneway that runs from Abbey Street to the quays. But it did include pictures of what it could look like if it were done up.

In December last year, a majority of Dublin city councillors voted to close the public right-of-way at Harbour Court.

In February, some local councillors changed their minds, and withdrew their support for the move – although the vote was done by then.

The laneway is still open. But documents released in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act show the council is considering options for gates at each of the three entrances, on Marlborough Street, Abbey Street and Eden Quay.

Liam Lonergan, the managing director of Budget Travel and Club Travel, based on Abbey Street, says he attended a meeting recently about the closure. “I’m 100 percent sure it’s going ahead,” he says.

Lonergan says local businesses have been asking the council to close Harbour Court for 10 years due to anti-social behaviour and the move is overdue. “It’s a pretty grim situation.”

Harbour Court doesn’t have much potential for transformation, he says. There are other laneways in the city that are more attractive, says Lonergan, and maybe they could be decorated and brought back into use.

Dublin City Council is considering closing other laneways in the north inner city too. Residents have asked the council to shut Ormonde Place, near the Four Courts, due to anti-social behaviour.

Councillors say that they agree to the closures reluctantly, because they don’t have alternative options.

One former council planner, Kieran Rose says that closing down laneways is not the answer.  “It’s crazy,” he said in April. “If we do this we are giving up on the city.”