Where the streets have no shame

Like it’s not bad enough they moved their royalties company and its mountain of taxable cash to Amsterdam, now Bono and the Edge have persuaded Ireland’s planning board to let them wipe their asses with Dublin history.

The planning authority ordered the developers to preserve the facades of six buildings: the 1930s Art Deco original hotel and five other adjacent Georgian and Victorian properties being swallowed up by the future Clarence. It also ordered that an archaeologist be on the construction site at all times.

The planning panel said Foster’s envisioned hotel “would provide a building of unique quality and architectural distinction” that would “in time become a significant feature in vistas along the Liffey (River) and would ensure the continued historic hotel use of a signature building.”

Can you say rationalization, boys and girls? I knew you could. :facepalm:

The approved $235 million plan will gut the original Clarence hotel and the adjacent buildings, replacing them with a giant mongo 166-room hotel with a giant mongo glass-roofed atrium and some ridiculous giant mongo “sail” on the roof.

Two of the Georgian buildings are classified as protected, which makes this abomination a glaring violation of current conservations laws as well as good taste. According to the city regulations, no protected structure can be demolished short of “exceptional circumstances” like the building being in danger of collapse.

Lining Bono’s already fat pockets does not count as exceptional frikkin circumstances.

The tall building in the middle is the current Clarence. On the left are the Georgian buildings Bono will be gutting. On the right are the former Dollard printing works.