The Grand Old Dame of Eyre Square will finally undergo a €1.2 million facelift on her most unappealing side.
Planning issues, the Covid pandemic and the redevelopment of Ceannt Train Station have all hampered plans to refresh the 1960s, brutalist extension of the Hardiman Hotel, but scaffolding went up this week for a long-delayed revamp.
Hotel manager Patrick Walsh said the 174-year-old business has been unable to rent out rooms in the six storey, dilapidated concrete block since 2019. A request lodged last summer with Galway city council to extend the hotel’s current planning permission by 18 months estimates its owner, the Choice Hotel Group, has dropped at least €1 million in lost revenue due to delays.
The current plan is to re-clad the dated building, which sits on concrete pillars above the main, road entrance from Eyre Square to Ceannt Station - itself in the final stages of a massive, €70 million renovation.
The Hardiman’s top-floor leisure centre and out-of-use swimming pool will be removed, although an application to add an extra storey was rejected by planners.
The hotel will insert 19 ocean view suites to the block, plus eight ‘classic’ rooms, with some window openings to be reduced in size to prevent overheating in summer sunshine. Conneally Builders commenced enabling works this week.
The push to modernise this unused extension of the Hardiman is the final piece of a €10 million investment by Choice Hotels in the city centre icon, after already spending a reported €7 million on a major overhaul of the main, cut stone building since its purchase in 2017.
The former Great Southern Hotel was in state ownership until 2006, when it was purchased by Galway developer Gerry Barrett’s Edward Holdings and rebranded as the Meyrick Hotel, named after the British general who suppressed the 1798 rebellion in the West of Ireland. In 2019, it was renamed The Hardiman after the city’s first and most famous historian, James Hardiman (d.1855 ).
Mr Barrett is fronting a reported €320 million redevelopment of the 8.5 acre Augustine Hill property behind Ceannt Station and the Hardiman for Summix, a British venture capital outfit. This will include ten new lanes cut across brownfield land owned by CIE, to link Eyre Square with Lough Atalia. These pedestrian routes will host a new shopping centre, cinema, six blocks of apartments and a new hotel.
Alongside Bonham Quay, Elkstone’s eight-story, 345-bed student block on Queen Street, and the Byrne Group’s planned nine-storey extension to the Victoria Hotel, the skyline skirting Eyre Square’s eastern end will look markedly different in the years to come.
Eyre Square is a major focal point in the Galway City Council’s current city centre development proposals. Plans were lodged earlier this month to demolish public toilets and the tourist kiosk on Kennedy Park, replacing them with a new, solar-powered tourist information centre, toilets, outdoor seating, and open-air performance space.
This will be the first, significant refresh of the city centre square since its controversial €6.5m facelift beginning in 2004, which ultimately cost ratepayers €15m over seven years, after budget overruns, delays, contractors pulling out, emergency loans and days out at both the High Court and Supreme Court.
