City Hall on College Road will be demolished after Galway City Council completes its move to Crown Square next year.
The stylised blue and amber letter ‘G’ carved into limestone blockwork by the main entrance to City Hall, will be salvaged, and relocated either to the council’s new €45 million HQ, or to the City Museum after it undergoes a €19.3m extension and refurbishment.
Speaking at a media briefing to journalists within City Hall on Monday, senior officials revealed that when they recommend a Part VIII planning application to councillors after their Crown Square move in 2027, the redevelopment of the local authority’s valuable College Road campus will warrant total demolition of existing structures.
“This building will be knocked, subject to a Part VIII [decision] for elected members,” reporters were told.
The council’s stated policy is to retain the four-acre site “for future mixed-use development, with potential to generate funding to support council services,” after it relocates to Mervue.
A Part VIII planning application is used when a local authority proposes its own development, rather than approving or rejecting third party applications. A Part VIII is decided by majority vote of the council’s elected members, not officials in its Planning Department.
The intention to demolish - rather than renovate or repurpose - Galway City Council’s home since the 1980s, was revealed in a briefing on the organisaton’s new communications strategy, which includes the controversial replacement of its capital ‘G’ logo with a lower case ‘g’. This logo change has prompted a ‘Keep the G’ campaign to advocate for the emblem, designed for the city’s quincentenary in 1984, and adopted by the Council in 2007 to sit alongside its historic coat of arms.
The large, approximately 2sqm capital ‘G’ engraving surmounted by Galway city’s coat of arms, is painted in light blue and gold paint – the county colours before their replacement with maroon and white in the 1930s. It is circled by the words ‘Halla na Cathrach Gaillimh’ and is thought to be sited above the location of the building’s foundation stone, laid by the city’s first female mayor, Fianna Fáil’s Councillor Mary Byrne, in 1985.
Officials say it will be removed from the building, and is likely to form part of a permanent exhibition in Galway City Museum titled ‘The History of Galway in Symbols, 1484-2026’.
The large rug bearing the city’s coat of arms hanging above the mayoral seat within City Hall will also find a new home in the public lobby of the new Crown Square HQ, as part of its €17 million fit out by Flynn Construction. The thick woollen hanging was made by V’Soske Joyce in Moycullen, a luxury manufacturer whose carpets grace Washington’s Oval Office, the Pope’s Roman apartments, the Sultan of Oman’s Palace and Leinster House.
In June, Galway city councillors voted to rezone their College Road campus and Yeats School next door from Community Facility (CF ) to Commercial/Industrial (CI ).
This means a masterplan currently being drawn up for the four-acre site is not constrained to propose public service infrastructure only, such as libraries, a city gallery or large, civic cultural space long demanded by arts organisations across the city.
A number of councillors have suggested part of the campus should be used for city centre housing, while others have advocated for a site sale which could raise at least €3 million. Its rezoning supports “higher density and diverse city centre-related activities”, allows buildings “of significant height” and mandates new pedestrian and cycle connections to Forster Court and public transport hubs.
The council’s buildings on College Road were reportedly valued for insurance purposes in 2022 for €30 million. The council’s chief executive, Leonard Cleary, and chief finance officer, Helen Kilroy, have calculated that moving their HQ to the larger, new build in Mervue, designed by architect Henry J Lyons, built by JJ Rhatigan, will save the local authority paying rent for three admin buildings in the city centre, and a €69 million bill for renovating the current City Hall.
Temporary office space costing €38 million in rent would be required to house the council while modernising the existing buildings, finished by builder JJ Rhatigan in 1988, and revamped in 2002, based on designs by Simon J Kelly Architects.
When the Advertiser visited this week, staff complained about emptying buckets of rainwater in offices on Monday mornings after a wet weekend, and difficulties with the heating system in the main chamber prompted Mayor Helen Ogbu and the city manager to call for fresh-air breaks during a drawn-out pre-Budget meeting.
During the Covid 19 pandemic, the council spent a reported €200,000 meeting in Leisureland, or in rented hotel rooms, because of concerns about ventilation in the council chamber.
