Cork set to reach for the stars as hotel plan unveiled
Plans for a 34-storey Cork city centre hotel, which would become Ireland’s tallest tower and twice the height of the 17-storey Elysian building, are finally revealed today by New York-based Irish developers.
The tower is part of a €150m development proposed for the city’s landmark Cork Harbour Commissioners site, and comes two years after the site’s c€5m sale was agreed by the Port of Cork.
After extensive pre-planning discussions with Cork City Council, the US-based, Kerry-born developers are set to lodge a formal planning application for a mixed-use development this month via their company, Tower Holdings Group. It goes on public display tomorrow.
There is a whole new design team involved since the project was initiated in 2017. It comprises international architects Gensler, and Irish designers Henry J Lyons, whose work is already rising up on Cork’s quaysides, and who last month submitted plans for a 26-storey build-to-rent ‘Built to Rent’ tower for Cork developers JCD, directly across the river’s south channel on Albert Quay.
In this latest Leeside ‘reach for the skies’, Tower Holdings already has full planning secured for a 15-storey, slender €20m Cork tower, The Prism, approved by An Bord Pleanála for a site near the city’s main bus station, 100m away from this pivotal harbour site.
Their new application is for a 240-bed hotel tower, with 25 serviced apartments, on the landmark port site, the epicentre of the city’s docklands redevelopment.
It comes after important alterations were made to earlier designs, including a height reduction from as many as 40 storeys, as well as moving the tower back from the very tip of the ‘island’ site where the Lee’s north and south channels meet.
Other elements of the overall plan include what’s billed as cultural uses, reflecting Cork port’s maritime and trading history; along with some offices; retail units including food and beverage outlets for local entrepreneurs in the Bonded Warehouse, which is a protected structure, and a sky bar and restaurant for panoramic dining at the very top.
