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Spiral ramps at Dublin Airport

dublincc2

Brilliant news today that Fingal County Council have made the correct decision to refuse permission for DAA to demolish the iconic spiral ramps at T1. Those ramps are an integral part of the fabric of the airport and are a symbol of the airport, I am old enough (just) to remember the car park up there. Probably as important in visual/historic terms as the original terminal.

Now that this proposal to remove them has been rejected, should they be refurbished to deal with any structural issues and reopened as a car park? It would require clearing whatever is in that space, but should be a worthwhile endeavour considering the parking pressures at the airport. 600 parking spaces were available across the two levels when it was shut.

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Zebra3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123240753#Comment_123240753

Unfortunately?

Bob_Average

Here is a view of how the ramps look today from the top.

Bob

PeadarCo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123241100#Comment_123241100

Times change there's an element of sadness in that. I agree that's it crazy planning permission was refused to demolish it, at the same though I can appreciate that some people may be sad to see the ramps go.

John_Rambo

They're very cool and should stay.

Are they wide enough for cars to drift on them? Always wondered. And I'm surprised they haven't been scouted for location shoots or footage hasn't turned up of longboarders utilising them.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123241178#Comment_123241178

They are only accessible from staff areas of the airport so would not be available for that.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123241134#Comment_123241134

Great stuff, have you got any more pictures?

I got a reply to my email regarding a feasibility study to reopen the ramps, they said that a number of people had requested they be reopened since the decision but that the matter is under appeal and as such there would be no consideration at this time.

From what I have heard from people working in the airport and general conversation, nobody is crying out for them being removed, and a good few think it should be reopened if only because it would be a ‘cool’ thing.

Tenzor07

Not only are the spirals a massive eyesore which don't deserve to be preserved like some kinda national monument, but they also take up a lot of space that could be used to make the departures/security check area much more efficient and modern..the design and capacity of such hasn't changed in decades…

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245641#Comment_123245641

They look even cooler from that angle. Thanks.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245641#Comment_123245641

This again is another example of DAA shortsightedness.

It was said at the the time and is generally quietly accepted now by those in the know that T2 should’ve been built on the north apron/exit road, circled in red on a pre-construction satellite view below.

This would’ve meant more room to expand, better access to the north runway, none of the bottlenecks for aircraft taxiing out, the retention of Corballis House and Pier C (which was only open a few years when they got rid of it).

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123241134#Comment_123241134

Iconic 🙄

Tenzor07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245756#Comment_123245756

Oh yea amazing, at this stage we should just turn the airport into a museum and charge people for a tour of the iconic car-park spirals and classic terminal? Once the 2007 passenger cap is exceeded the DAA have to make money some how!?

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245848#Comment_123245848

You're probably on to something there Tenzor!!! Not a bad idea. An Irish museum of flight. I'd say there's thousands of photographs and artefact's of aviation interest (including old aircraft) and history knocking around the whole airport from the Cahills of Iona, Aer Lingus and DAA. Even Ryanair and good old DAA might get in on the action.

Astral Nav

I've cycled down them in a previous life. You had to make sure your brakes worked and you didn't get too fast🧐.

No real need for them and infrastructure in DUB is very poor. No bus station, no rail station, lack of space, no land side supermarket which most large airports have. FCC come up with reasons to say no but the DAA have been reluctant to spend or even plan properly.

One interesting way to move things on might be to consider excising Dublin Airport from the FCC area. Lots of US airports are consciously included the city area instead of the county to improve tax flows.....

Tenzor07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123246033#Comment_123246033

May as well make good use of the airport, and will keep all you environ Mentalists happy too, no noise or jet fumes..

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123246180#Comment_123246180

I posted in good faith Tenzor, Dublin Airport is far too vital to the economy to be repurposed as a full scale museum. Aviation is crucial to Ireland’s connectivity, trade, and tourism. We're an Island so it’s not something that should be dismissed lightly for environmental reasons. But I think you know this already and you may be posting factitiously!!

Back on track… Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has profited immensely from aviation, yet fook all has been done to preserve or celebrate the rich history that made it all possible. A small aviation museum near the airport, incorporating the spiral ramps of the original terminal, wouldn’t just be a token display, it would be a properly curated space, preserving and showcasing Ireland’s aviation achievements with the respect they deserve. More than that, it could serve as an educational hub for school tours, a cultural landmark, and an employment opportunity for local communities and retired aviation workers.

Given that DAA rakes in nearly €40 million a year from car parking alone and that Dublin Airport ranks as the third most expensive airport in the world for private jet landings, it’s about time they coughed up and stepped up.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245764#Comment_123245764

Added image

SC024

It's a spiral car ramp that's rarely used, as car parks go yes it looks nicer than some others.if you like how it looks there's plenty of pictures online. Drive up there take some of your own for posterity sake but life goes on. people get old , things get old. Let them Knock it & build something more functional & relative to current needs before it gets "preserved" & ends up falling down due to gravity or worse becomes a safety hazard, move with the times

CrabRevolution

Out of curiosity, among whom are these ramps "iconic"? A google image search for "Dublin airport" has the spiral ramps nowhere to be seen until the background of one aerial photo about 600 results in. For an "iconic" structure that's pretty anonymous.

I've never seen a postcard, keyring, or fridge magnet with the airport ramps on it. On top of the usual Ha'penny bridge, Molly Malone, GPO, Christchurch etc. even modern structures like the Samuel Beckett Bridge and the Convention Centre have become visible icons of Dublin, but the ramps are never shown in any representation of Dublin despite having a 30 year head start. In my search I came across a set of dozens of postcards of buildings and planes significant in Irish aviation. Still doesn't include the ramps: Irish Aviation Interest Postcards. Early and historic Aer Lingus and Ryanair panes, early views of D

Go a bit more niche and still they haven't much significance; a search of "20th century Irish architecture", or "mid 20th century Dublin buildings" and the likes often show the airport itself but no spiral ramps. Even looking up "Dublin Airport architecture" only has one mention of the ramps, from an article this week about their proposed demolition.

This guy literally focuses on 20th century Dublin architecture in his art including the airport and some very obscure stuff and still the ramps are nowhere to be seen: Paddy Duffy - Jam Art Factory

So for a supposedly iconic structure, their impact on the general public seems to have been pretty minimal. Even on this thread the defence of keeping them is just "I remember them from years ago" or "I think they look cool". Both valid sentiments but well short of making them iconic.

ctrl-alt-delete

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245641#Comment_123245641

A true White Elephant.

BestWestern

Corballis House was a dump inside back when it was the purchasing offices in the 90's. The way it's iconised makes it seem like it was a unique masterpiece.

Fingal coco's largest employer and rate payer is the airport and they seem to have a toxic relationship with them.

It's pathetic planning blocks like this that mean we have substandard infrastructure. Terminal 1 was built with a metro station in the basement - yet half a century later, I'd say the objections to building a metro to the airport would take years to overcome.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248025#Comment_123248025

Was there actually a metro station built underneath T1? Always thought that was an urban myth.

Corvallis House could’ve been done up inside or if they absolutely had to demolish it for the T2 works disassembled it brick by brick and rebuilt it elsewhere. This was proposed AFAIK.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248025#Comment_123248025

It's unclear whether T1 was built with a metro station box in the basement or not. The Irish Times made this claim in an article last year, but that same article said a second "station box" had been built at the Mater, which is untrue, so I am not convinced by their research (The work at the Mater was a diaphragm wall, to prevent subsidence damage to the new buildings from future Metro tunneling, and it was a condition of the planning for those works).

If anyone has documentary evidence of this, though, it'd be great to see it.

Certainly the basement space was built at double height, but that could have been to accommodate additional baggage handling equipment as the airport capacity expanded. As it happened, airlines severely limited passenger baggage over the intervening decades, so there would have been no need.

If it had been feasible to use this space for Metrolink, it would have been used, but I suspect 50 years of other development on the airport site probably means the basement is inaccessible from any direction now.

astrofool

This seems to be Fingal County Council trolling the DAA again.

And no doubt FCC will be howling when the airport is taken out of their hands.

CrabRevolution

It's bizarre how every other local authority are major advocates for their airport, demanding all sorts of Government funding and intervention to prop them up even if the airport has no commercial business like Waterford.

Yet at the same time Fingal CC seem actively determined to damage Dublin Airport.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have some nefarious greater plan but this is the local authority stupid enough to record on meeting minutes that they were rezoning Dublin Airport land out of personal grudges rather than for planning purposes;

High Court judge finds councillors considered non-planning matters when rezoning DAA site – The Irish Times

Tenzor07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123247958#Comment_123247958

Sure is..

Not sure who came up with the idea to preserve the spirals of shite.. Sure look at all the other similar brutal rubbish they bult in Dublin, they knocked down the Theatre Royal to build that monstrosity "Hawkins/Apollo house" so I wonder where the concerned citizens objections to Hawkins house's destruction, should have been preserved as a historical monument instead of being demolished? Sadly we still have many many examples of brutalist buildings all over the city…

return guide

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248574#Comment_123248574

As part of the 6 bay extextension in the early 2000's to terminal 1, there was an area that was to be a train/metro stop in the basement. This was left undevolped for a couple of years before being repurposed as check in area 14.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248895#Comment_123248895

Ah, That's a whole lot different to the story the IT tells, that it was part of the original terminal plans in 1969(?).

millb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248025#Comment_123248025

This is it - a toxic relationship !!! IMHO we have a few individuals in FCC who have the cynicism and lack of accountability to the greater good and it appears all sorts of shenanigans arise and get posted / generated to mess up plans for improvements. Then we probably have a bunch of legals / advisiors for DAA who love p£aying thi$ gam€. €€€€

Beechwoodspark

Dublin airport needs to wake up and realise the climate emergency isn’t going to disappear.

They need to be planning for downsizing not the other way.

Personally i think those ramps are an interesting design feature.

i would like to have driven around them back in the day.

Keep them and turn part of the structure into a museum on aviation before climate change.

millb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123248657#Comment_123248657

IT coverage: Judge seems wise and well balanced.

However, there were too many of non-peripheral “personal” contributions in this instance, he said.

The DAA-owned site contains a long-established sports complex, which is used by airport staff and the community and operated by a non-profit organisation called ALSAA.

The Fingal councillors changed the site zoning which prescribes the intended land use from “Dublin Airport” to “community infrastructure”. The former objective aims to facilitate air transport infrastructure and airport related activities, while the latter guides a site for community facilities or spaces.

The DAA wanted the site to be rezoned as “Dublin Airport”.

Ruling on the DAA’s case against the council, Mr Justice Humphreys held that the lands will be treated as unzoned until the Fingal County Council development plan is varied to adopt an objective for its use.

The DAA, represented by senior barristers Fintan Valentine and Aoife Carroll, instructed by Eversheds, alleged Fingal County Council elected members acted beyond their powers by being motivated by considerations other than that of the proper planning and sustainable development of the area, as required by the 2000 Planning and Development Act.

It contended that the record of a February 2023 council meeting demonstrates that the members were driven by a desire to “help” the sport complex operator, ALSAA, and by a feeling that “messages need to be sent to the DAA”.

The airport authority included councillors’ statements about “supporting” ALSAA to get it “ready for the next stage when the DAA are going to come along and try to take that building off them”.

Mr Justice Humphreys found the members went “outside the stated planning rationale” during the February 2023 meeting.

Among the statements made were: “The people in ALSAA want this zoning and they are looking for it” and “There is the animal in the room where the DAA have been trying to make life very difficult for ALSAA”. Another councillor said: “I have been asked by ALSAA members and the people that run that ALSAA complex to support them and I just want them to know that I am supporting them”.

The judge said some of the members’ comments are “relevant to a degree”, such as wanting to preserve the site’s existing use. However, some of the statements place reliance on supporting a particular occupier in its dispute. Land use objectives concern a “particular use, not supporting a particular user, or indeed about sending a message to a particular landowner”, the judge said.

Mr Justice Humphreys noted no elected member wants a transcript of their remarks pored over in a courtroom, but he said this procedure follows Supreme Court precedent.