After series of city-centre laneway closures, council aims to revamp one off Dame Street

As midday approached on Tuesday, a steady flow of pedestrians were marching through the laneway between Dame Court and Dame Street.

The sun lit the tight passageway. The warm rays were complemented by the light blue paint job outside the Mercantile Hotel on the left and the golden lettering above Sam’s Barbers on its right.

This short-cut is the latest lane the council is eyeing up for a few improvement works, David Forde, manager at the council's City Co-ordination Office, said at a meeting of the South East Area Committee on Monday. For years, officials have talked about laneway projects in the city centre.

They’ve been looking at a concept for this laneway with an architects' firm over the last couple of months, in similar vein to the council-led project that aimed to revitalised Cole’s Lane and Talbot Lane, Forde said. “So we said we’d come over to the south side, and look at Dame Court,” Forde said.

This latest laneway project is just a small-scale intervention which would feature music-themed lighting on the ground, and murals, and cost about €100,000, he said.

This project to fix up the laneway off Dame Court comes after a series of council plans to abandon other laneways, including Swan Alley, off Thomas Street, Harbour Court, off Abbey Street, Ormond Place, and St Catherine’s Lane.

While welcomed, it was something of a surprise to local councillors, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn said on Tuesday by phone. “It comes out of nowhere,” he said.

The Mercantile Hotel was renovated not that long ago, and as part of that project it restored, and spread out into, a little council-owned plaza at the corner of South Great George's Street and Dame Lane.

A spokesperson for the council has not yet replied to a Tuesday-morning email to find out whether it had engaged any local businesses on the project, or whether there was a timeline for these works.

Nor did Pat Burke, the Mercantile Group's chief executive reply when contacted on Tuesday morning to see if the council has engaged with the hotel for this project.

Raglan Road on Dame Street

The council and Millimetre Design, an interior design and branding studio, are looking to explore a spoken word and music theme for this lane, Forde told the area committee on Monday.

They came up with the name "Where Old Ghosts Meet" for the concept, referencing the Patrick Kavanagh poem "On Raglan Road", he said.

Concept art provided to councillors shows the ceiling above the lane decorated with a golden ribbon on which the music and lyrics to "Spanish Lady", a folk song popularised by the Dubliners, are painted.

On the walls, there are proposed murals of performers including Luke Kelly, Ronnie Drew, Sinead O’Connor and Enya, slides show.

But those haven’t been confirmed yet, Forde said. “We’ll be linking in with the Traditional Music Archive in relation to that.”

Some of the golden ribbon over pedestrians heads will be a painted mural, and other parts will be an aluminium installation, he said. “It’s basically laser-cut music notes."

The concept also proposes more lighting embedded within the pavement which imitates the wavy golden ribbon, slides show. “Lighting would be installed on both buildings, shining onto the ribbon and reflecting at night, and giving it a nice image and brightening that whole space.”

Details like the murals and theme are still at the concept stage and not yet finalised, he said. “But the actual guts of what we’re proposing is the ribbon and murals.”

In principle it would be good to see the city animated, and the concept is “grand”, said Flynn, the independent councillor, at the meeting. “There’s a lot of younger musicians that are coming up, and again we should consider them rather than those who have passed away and had great careers.”

He pointed to singer Radie Peat from the group Lankum as an example of someone to consider.

The architects have engaged with a mural artist to finalise the design, Forde said.

Sinn Féin Councillor Kourtney Kenny queried how much the project would cost, and how easy it would be to replace any of the installation should it get damaged.

There’s nothing worse than seeing a lot of work going into projects like this, she said. “And then it gets broken, and it’s just left there.”

It’s about €100,000 “all in”, Forde said. “Not a huge issue in relation to what’s being installed.”

Any repair works would be falling back on the council’s City Co-ordination Office, he said. “So we would be maintaining that.”

Fine Gael Councillor Patrick Kinsella asked if the council would consider running a competition for mural ideas. “Would we consider asking the students up in NCAD to put their hat in the ring?”

That is something they’ll look at for future laneways, he said. “And if this works well, we’ll roll this out across the city centre.”