Google

DUBLINBIKES DOCKING STATION 14

Google employees will be able to cycle to and from work as there is a DublinBikes docking station across the street from their workplace.

I have not visited this area for a few years and today I was surprised to discover that the Treasury Building is currently a construction site.

When I returned from California in the 1980s I lived at the corner of Eblana Villas and Lower Grand Canal Street and at the time the building was the Hertz HQ in Ireland. There were three apartments but mine was the only one that was occupied. I think that the building is now named Wentworth House and it may have been home to a language college. I was offered all three apartments at a very good price but decided against buying as there was serious anti-social activity in the immediate area.

Google bought the Treasury Building from Ronan Group Real Estate for €120 million in early 2020 to further expand their Silicon Docks campus which is nearby. In February 2022 Dublin City Council granted planning permission to Google Ireland to increase the height of the building from six to eight storeys.

The Treasury Building was the headquarters of the Irish government’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) for many years. Redeveloped by Ronan Group, the Treasury Building was described as a landmark six-storey Grade A office building that previously housed Boland’s Bakery. This historic building was occupied by Éamon de Valera, later President of Ireland, during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Following its purchase in 1984, a major redevelopment saw the building stripped back to its concrete framed structure and reimagined for a new commercial future with the first 20,000 sq ft floorplates ever delivered in the Irish market.

Rowan Gillespie was commissioned to create a sculpture for the outside wall of the building. The statue, named ‘Aspiration’, was originally of a naked man climbing the outside wall, but Johnny Ronan insisted that the sculpture be changed to a woman. The statue was made of fibreglass. The sculpture was removed in 2020 when the building was sold.

25 SEPTEMBER 2023

When I was young I had a few friends who lived in Sandyford which was in the country rather than the city. It was often the case that they could not come to school because of snow.

Sandyford is a suburb of Dublin, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland.

Sandyford Business District makes up much of the suburb and encompasses 4 business parks: Sandyford Business Park, Stillorgan Business Park, Central Park and South County Business Park. Some of the multinational companies based in the area include Google, Facebook, Microsoft and AIB.

The Luas Green Line was built through the Business District and the Kilmacud, Stillorgan, Sandyford and Central Park stops serve the area, the middle two lying along the eastern edge of the original district. All four of these stops are in the Sandyford Business District. Sandyford was the Green Line terminus until the extension to Cherrywood opened in October 2010. The depot for the Green Line is located on the eastern edge of the Business District.

Sandyford House, a pub in the centre of the village, has been an inn and coach house since the 1690s. For 200 years it was a stopping place for travellers en route to Enniskerry. From 1803 onwards, the Chatham Street to Enniskerry mail coach (a two-hour journey) stopped and deposited the region’s mail at the inn, which acted as the local post office.

Sandyford Business District spans one of the biggest business parks in Ireland, consisting of over 1,000 companies employing approximately 26,000 people. It was officially opened in June 1967 on a site of 120 acres and for 50 years was known as the “Sandyford Industrial Estate”; 85 acres allocated to light industry and the rest to offices.

The area includes several separate business parks and sites, including Sandyford Business Park, Stillorgan Business Park, Central Park, and South County Business Park.

A proposal to establish a Sandyford Business District area, to include the core Sandyford Business Park as well as the other areas, resulted in the establishment of the Sandyford Business Improvement District Company (SBID) in January 2017. The area has capacity for 17,500 more employees, 350,000 sq m of commercial floor space and 1,000 residential units.

Companies in the business district include American Airlines, Barclaycard, Canon, Microsoft, Novell, and Vodafone Ireland. The Irish Management Institute also has its headquarters in northern Sandyford. The Irish Mint, a division of the Central Bank of Ireland, is located in Sandyford, west of the M50 and north of the village.

ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE GOOGLE BUILDING ON GRAND CANAL STREET

SANDYMOUNT LUAS TRAM STOP