An 'amorphous block': Cork planners reject Premier Inn hotel design for Leisureplex site

UK firm spent €5.5m acquiring the former Coliseum Cinema site

Thu, 19 Dec, 2024 - 19:48

Catherine Shanahan

The owners of the Premier Inn have been sent back to the drawing board to re-design the hotel they proposed for Cork city’s Leisureplex site after planners described it as an “amorphous block”.

The Whitbread group, the UK’s largest hospitality company and owners of the Premier Inn brand, spent €5.5m acquiring the former Coliseum Cinema site last February as part of plans to build a second Premier Inn in Cork, a month after opening their first inn in the city on Morrison’s Quay.

When lodging their application last October to build their second inn, Whitbread pointed out that the 0.5 acre site, at the junction of MacCurtain St and Brian Boru St, already had the benefit of an extant planning permission for a 171-bed hotel, granted to previous applicants International Investments ICAV in January 2021.

Whitbread said at the time that their proposed hotel was “similar to the permitted development in terms of building height, scale, and character”.

However Cork City Council’s planning department has come down heavily on the proposed design of the 173-bed hotel saying it would result “in a large generic block”, at odds with the surrounding historic environment. That environment includes the Victorian buildings of MacCurtain St’s Architectural Conservation Area (ACA); the former postal sorting office, a protected structure on Brian Boru St and Trinity Presbyterian Church at the bottom of Summerhill North, also a protected structure as well as a local landmark building.

The proposed Premier Inn design as viewed from Brian Boru Bridge has been rejected by Cork City Council. Picture: Model Works

The planner said the proposed inn design would have “an adverse material impact” on the setting and character of these buildings, as well as on the setting of nearby Wellington Road and St Luke’s ACA.

The planner also said the overall design and materials of the proposed building, designed by UK-based Allison Pike Architects, would result in “a plain and repetitive singular development that would fail to appropriately respond to or enhance the character of the ACA”.

Moreover, the massing and scale (one, five and seven storey blocks, with setbacks) was “considered excessive” at a “particularly sensitive location for a taller structure”. This structure would rise above the roof of the redbrick former sorting offices fronting the river “creating an awkward composition” and it would interrupt a “key view” northwards towards the Trinity Presbyterian Church, the planner said.

She recommended that the applicant engage the services “of a suitably qualified accredited conservation architect to contribute to a redesign of the proposed development in response to the concerns raised”.

The council’s rejection of the initial design could delay the project, which Whitbread had hoped to start work on in 2025, with doors opening some time in 2027.

The group has six months to respond to the council’s request for further information, with the clock starting on December 12, the date on which a decision had been expected.

A spokesperson for Whitbread said they are committed to the project and would work with the city council to get it over the line.

“We will engage proactively with the Council to address their feedback,” the spokesperson said. “Ultimately, we want to deliver our investment and create the second Premier Inn in Cork,”