Vacancy Watch: An 18th-century building building on Aungier Street that’s empty and rotting

One evening in mid-October, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn strode through the reception of the Marlin Hotel on Bow Lane, past the wooden tree sculptures and eco walls.

He wanted to get a good view of the back of 25 Aungier Street, a protected structure next door.

Through the window of the plush dining area, he pointed to the three-storey townhouse, which is more than 270 years old.

Dull and bockety, the rear was braced by three horizontal steel beams, and a younger concrete extension.

The front was hugged by another trio of steel beams. The roller shutters were covered with graffiti tags, and its windows covered by wooden boards.

Flynn has been trying to get Dublin City Council to buy number 25 for years, he says.

He and locals would be happy just to see the owner do it up at the least, Flynn says. “What everybody wants is for some movement, because this section of the street looks fucking dreadful.”

Next door at the Swan Pub, Ronan Lynch says the neglect beside them brings down the street and makes it harder for him to care for his premises.

“As a business-owner, I take pride in my building and spend a lot to maintain it,” he says. “It’s frustrating to be beside another building that is taking the look off the street.”

“There’s no repercussions for keeping your building in a dilapidated state and it’s dangerous,” he said.

The owner, John Winston, did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him, asking if or when he had plans to develop or sell the property.

Emptied

According to the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, most of 25 Aungier Street was probably built around 1740.

The modest three-storey building is hemmed in by a pair of four-storey buildings, the late 19th-century public house The Swan Bar, on the corner of Aungier and York Street, and a similar townhouse dating to around 1760.

In 2009, Bridal Designs, a wedding dress boutique, took up the ground floor, show images from Google Street View. Images don’t clearly show when that shop moved out.

But three years later, Dublin City Council’s Dangerous Building’s Department carried out stabilising works on the premises, according to a spokesperson for the council.

The council needed to make the building safe after the owner removed internal floors without proper consent, the spokesperson said.

In March 2015, the owner, John Winston, applied to the council for permission to remove the emergency structural steelworks.

Winston’s application also proposed putting in new floors and walls inside on the first, second and third storeys.

Winston also said he planned to refurbish the ground-floor shop, and to put both a studio and duplex apartment in the upper floors.

In April 2015, Dublin City Council declared the application invalid, because the notices for the application did not describe the full nature and extent of the development, according to the council.

Knock-on effect

On a Tuesday evening in mid-October, Lynch sat inside the window of The Swan, the next-door bar.

His grandfather had bought the bar in 1937, Lynch says. “We’ve been neighbours for a long time, and the building’s been uncared for for so long.”

There hasn’t been anybody above the ground floor since the early 2000s, he says.

Lynch says it has impacted this building, too. “There’s been a huge amount of water ingress, which is damaging to our building, and we’re trying to rectify it, but it’s kinda disappointing because you really want to bring these buildings back to life.”

The vacancy and graffiti damages the reputation of this part of the street, Lynch says.

On the other side of 25 Aungier Street, numbers 22 and 24 are also vacant and rundown. But the owners there have been granted planning to redevelop them.

In May 2019, An Bord Pleanála granted permission to The Dolphin company for a hotel with a bar, restaurant, retail and/or cafe development in numbers 22, 23, 23a and 24.

In February 2020, Cantrell & Crowley Architects announced that it would oversee the refurbishment and extension of the properties on Marlin Apartments Ltd’s behalf.

Marlin did not respond to an email query asking about how far along these refurbishment works are.

But while some progress has been made on the neighbouring 18th-century townhouses with planning approval secured for their eventual improvement, number 25 remains in a bad way.

Asking for action

On 11 September, Councillor Flynn asked the area manager at a meeting of the South East Area Committee for an update on the dilapidated building.

The council needs to deal with the property, he said, as it was having a negative impact on the efforts by the Marlin Hotel to refurbish and renovate the buildings next door.

Flynn noted too that the Swan Bar is in the process of doing works on its own building, but those have been sporadic, he said.

A council spokesperson said on 20 October that there was an ongoing liaison between the council’s Derelict Sites and Conservation Sections in relation to 25 Aungier Street.

The property wasn’t entered on the Derelict Sites Register, they said at the time, and as such, could not be subject of a Compulsory Purchase Order.

The Derelict Sites Unit had served a notice of its intention to enter the site on the register, they said, not specifying when this was issued.

But the owner’s architect made a representation against this on the owner’s behalf on the basis that a planning application was ready to be submitted, they said.

The architect sought a pre-application meeting with the Conservation Officer, the spokesperson said.

“The case will be reviewed in conjunction with the Conservation Section to consider the most appropriate course of action in light of the owner’s proposals for the property,” they said.

John Winston did not respond to queries sent via text asking when this application may be submitted, or if he has plans to either develop or sell the property.

Dublin City Council didn’t respond to a query as to whether this meeting has happened yet.

But as of 29 November the building had been added to the derelict sites register, opening the way for the council to impose an annual levy on the owner of 7 percent of the building’s market value – and even to use a compulsory purchase order to buy it.

At the Swan, Lynch says he has to take extra precautions when doing any work on his building, because of knock-on effects.

“A huge amount of work has to be undertaken in order to repair what damage is done, and future-proof my building against what could potentially happen going forward,” he said.