Vacancy Watch: Dublin Central Mission Building on Abbey Street, once a hub of community activity

In front of the Luas stop on Abbey Street, a large four-storey red brick building, containing a church and theatre space, is up for sale.

The Dublin Central Mission at 9c Abbey Street Lower was home to the local Methodist church and was until recently a hub for community groups and support services in the north inner-city.

Hundreds of people used the building every week, for AA meetings, other rehabilitation services and support groups, as well as language and dance classes. Dublin Central Mission also ran a homeless outreach service from the building.

“We were there for 30 years and they were very good to us, it was a lovely venue,” says Charles Kelly, director of Recovery Self Help Method Ireland, a charity that runs support groups for people with mental-health issues.

It was convenient for people to have so many self-help and recovery groups based in one location, he says, because some people with mental-health issues also have substance use issues, so it meant they could easily find other services.

“We really regretted having to close suddenly because we have a long-standing commitment to the groups we facilitated in that building,” said Rev. Dr. Laurence Graham,  the superintendent minister with the Dublin Central Mission, Methodist Church in Ireland.

As well as the self-help groups the Dublin Central Mission runs voluntary English conversation classes for potentially vulnerable migrants at a very low cost, he said.

The closure was also painful for the church-goers, said Rev. Graham.

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner wants Dublin City Council to explore the idea of buying the building or otherwise helping to ensure it is kept for community use.

Dublin City Council hasn’t yet responded to a query about this sent on Tuesday.

“My big fear is that it would lie vacant for a long time,” Horner says. “We need a lot more community spaces, our community spaces have been eroded steadily over the last number of years.”

Its closure is part of a wider trend of shrinking community space in the north inner-city, says Horner.

Cost of renovation works

“Abbey Street Methodist Church” reads the yellow sign against a green mosaic background, above the arched entrance to the four-storey red brick building.

The windows are different designs on each level and there are chimney stacks on either end.

The church was originally built in 1820 and remodelled in 1901 according to the National Built Heritage Service website. The building is on the record of protected structures.

In 2019, Dublin Central Mission was granted permission to build a new reception area, to install fire escapes, new toilets and a lift, install lights on the roof lights and restore some original features.

The permission granted also allows the demolition of a single-storey modern building on the site and to build a new return in its place, to carry out restoration works on the top floor including removing the stage and tiered seating in the multi-purpose hall.

Those works were not completed.

David Martin, of Building Information Ireland, which collates data on the cost of building projects, estimates that the works outlined in the planning permission would cost millions.

Loss to the community

Kelly says the room his group used had a window into the church and the building had beautiful wooden stairs.

Friends of Suicide Loss, a charity offering support to people bereaved by suicide, was previously based in the Dublin Central Mission building too, says the voluntary CEO, Terry Connolly.

Friends of Suicide Loss offers one-to-one and group support for people who are bereaved by suicide and those who have tried to take their own lives, he says they also run workshops and carry out research.

The organisation started out in Dublin city centre, says Connolly and the founders were from the inner-city too. “It’s really important to have spaces in the city,” he says. “It was a blow to us.”

People came from all over the city and even from other parts of Ireland to attend the meetings in Abbey Street because it was easy to find and had excellent access to public transport, says Connolly. “It was a very good focal point,” he says.

The rent Dublin Central Mission charged was very reasonable for a city-centre location, says Connolly.

The charity has a voluntary executive and wasn’t in a position to pay high city-centre rents, he says, so it moved its base to Tennant Hall, in Christ Church, Rathgar, he says.

Horner, the Green Party councillor, says that the closure of the Dublin Central Mission is another loss to the community infrastructure in the city centre. It is becoming difficult to find rooms to hire to hold meetings at reasonable rates, she says.

Seomra Spraoi closed years ago, says Horner. The Irish Aid Centre on O’Connell Street used to offer free meeting spaces to NGOs, she says.  Cultivate on Suffolk Street also shut as did a couple of places in Temple Bar, she says.

“Having a space like that in the heart of the city was really important and I’d love to see it preserved in some way, and continue to have a community function,” she says.

She is worried that it could sit on the market for a long time too. “I’m very concerned about it as another large vacancy on Abbey Street,” she said.

“We really need to be working to revitalise and regenerate Abbey Street,” says Horner.

Rev. Graham said that the Dublin Central Mission found alternative accommodation for the self-help groups, and the English conversation classes, that had long operated out of the Abbey Street building.

They temporarily secured three rooms in Parnell Square and are currently staffing those, to continue to facilitate as many of the groups as possible.

The mission intends to find other premises to keep offering its services in the north inner city, said Graham. “We are absolutely, actively seeking new permanent premises and we intend to remain in the area and to continue to do what we have done for 130 years.”

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: This article was updated at 1pm on 9 April 2024, to add in comments from Rev. Dr. Laurence Graham. Also, an earlier version of this story said that there had been a fire in the building before it closed, but this wasn’t true. We apologise for the error.