Work has been chipping away but much of the space will remain fenced off until early next year, to let new plants grow in.
Bricks have already been laid and cover vast stretches of Portobello Plaza, but some areas remain gravelly and incomplete.
On Tuesday, just outside the front steps of Portobello House, a light brown three-storey former hotel topped with pigeons, there was a rusty-orange triangular ledge.
There wasn't yet anything inside the triangle. Its planned bench hadn't yet been installed. Nor was there soil for the tree that would eventually be planted in it either.
Still, in all, 80 percent of the paving in the plaza is done and most of the planned planters are set up and ready too, said a Dublin City Council report to its South East Area Committee on Monday.
It is almost five years on since councillors began discussing the possibility of revamping the square by the Grand Canal but the project is finally close to finished, with most works to be wrapped up by the end of the year, according to the October update.
That doesn't mean the fences will come down then though, the update suggests.
The council’s intention is to keep most of the plaza closed off until next spring, it says. To let the planting and lawn get rooted, it says.
It was great to finally get this update, said Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne, once the meeting was over.
“I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously, we’re missing the November deadline," she said, referring to the original end date. "We should’ve been cutting the ribbon at the end of this month. But it does seem to be fairly on track to be mostly completed.”
The plaza outside Portobello Harbour has been fenced off since December 2021.
At that time, Dublin City Council had allowed that, to facilitate the construction of the NYX Hotel which opened in December 2023.
Over the summer of 2022, the council workshopped ideas for what the plaza might look like in the future, with proposals for a lawn area, play equipment, and a micro-woodland.
These proposals were criticised by the skateboarders who had frequently used the space.
Then, in October 2024, the council granted the proposal to turn the space into a "community focused park", according to the minutes from that meeting.
Work finally started on site in November 2025, and was supposed to take a year, according to Monday's report to councillors.
At Monday’s meeting, council landscape architect Eddie O’Gara said there were only a few minor adjustments to the November 2025 programme of works. “So it’s probably about a three-week delay,” he said.
Once the paving, planting and seating is done, they'll finish up the works on the jetty along the canal, he said. “We’ve received necessary approvals from Waterways Ireland for those works.”
Construction workers will also install the plaza’s new soft landscaping, like its raised grassy areas, trees and plants, and improve the paving area on South Richmond Street, he said. “So they’ve started today pushing the hoarding out towards that area, and they’ve managed to improve the original programme on that.”
Paving work is expected to be done by January, dependent on supervision from utilities, says the report.
Similarly, the light fittings will also cause minor delays, O’Gara said at the meeting. “That’s likely to happen in the first week or the second week of January.”
A few “play elements” may also not be done until then, he said. “So more or less, we’re on progress from what we originally estimated this time last year.”
The intention will then be to open the park in the spring once the soft landscaping has developed, he said. “But I think with the amount of hard landscape in the area that we should be able to open part of the area on a phased basis.”
Certainly that will be possible in front of Portobello House, he said. “And possibly the area in front of the new hotel, and to open up the walkway down the canal edge.”
Phili Halton, a member of the Irish Skate Association, said on Tuesday afternoon that he welcomed how the plaza was progressing.
The association had visited the site on Thursday, he said by phone, and they had been communicating well with the council. “Absolute praise to the architect for kinda listening to our thoughts.”
The surrounding granite ledges are intended to be skate-friendly and the heights of these ledges were being developed in line with the association's recommendations, he said. “Just the make-up of the ledges too can make huge differences, like how metal coping on the sides of ledges can lead to much better longevity.”
The latest update was largely welcomed by councillors at the area committee meeting on Monday evening.
Byrne, the Green Party councillor, asked if the budget had increased over the course of the refurbishment. Just a small increase, O’Gara said.
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