From top: aerial view of the 16-storey office tower block planned for Albert Quay, Cork at the grounds of the old Sextant Bar; Dan Boyle

I should have seen this coming. It’s a tactic that has been used far too frequently by greedy developers out to maximise profit. Nevertheless, the audacity of proposing this has shocked me. I had hoped we had left this kind of behaviour behind us.

Nine months ago, The Sextant Bar in Cork was unnecessarily demolished. Ostensibly this was done to allow the construction of a large apartment development, whose planning was obtained under the Strategic Housing Development process.

This week the developer has announced that the building of apartments there was not financially viable, and a new application would be made to construct an office development instead.

The great switcheroo has been beloved of Irish developers in the past. In all probability there was never any intention to build housing. All that was ever seen here was a space interrupted by the inconvenience of The Sextant Bar being there.

The hollow excuse of lack of viability is but a euphemism. Possible profit from apartments was not seen as being sufficient, the rental price per square metre being seen as being far higher from offices than from apartments.

Developers, we’re told, are risk takers. In this case an innate conservatism seems to have taken hold instead. Because in the past offices have brought a greater return than housing, any risk is thought lessened by seeking the supposed easier return.

This thinking is further embedded by government policies on tax and tax expenditures which promote construction activity for its own sake, rather than help incentivise needed buildings in the most appropriate places.

This has resulted in an imbalance, with a consequent over supply, of particular building developments. Along side the glut of office space that has been developed, there has been a similar pump priming of student accommodation and of hotels.

Many of these developments have been cheaper to build and when built offer the prospect of quicker and higher returns. Meanwhile necessary infrastructure, such as the provision of residential housing, continue to be under supplied, inflating prices which creates further obstacles for those who wish to be housed.

However the market has delivered before, as it is currently structured what it is delivering is the limiting the capacity for the construction of housing, creating other buildings that are not particularly needed.

New office development is in danger of becoming the whitest of elephants. Office buildings already are the most under utilised of buildings. Many being unused during night time hours and during weekends.

In a post COVID world, with a greater level of people working from home, what is the basis for believing that will be a need for greater office capacity? Is it not more likely that there will be greater vacancies in existing office developments?

The Sextant saga highlights so many ways in which our planning and development systems are not fit for purpose. There is the unwillingness to acknowledge the importance of maintaining existing streetscapes. Of being able to work with what exists, to enhance and augment, which should be the approach.

Instead we identify as ‘developers’ those so lacking in imagination, that to plot to remove then replace with what is soulless and is utterly unsustainable, makes them those who determine the future City we live in. We deserve so much better than that.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and serves as a Green Party councillor on Cork City Council. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic: JCD