Hostel plan rejected for Anglo Irish Bank site

The Planning Appeals Board has rejected proposals to convert the former Anglo Irish Bank offices in the city to a hostel.

The Board said the hostel would depreciate the value of other properties in the vicinity, and that signage would be visually obtrusive.

Last January the City Council refused permission for a 200-bed hostel on the site on the grounds it would seriously injure residential amenities in the area and would pose a traffic hazard.

Appealing that decision, project backers Shay Livingstone and Johnathan Duggan – who already run the Connacht Hotel and An Púcán – offered to reduce the number of bed spaces to 140.

However, An Bord Pleanála ruled: “It is considered that by reason of the nature and intensity of the proposed change of use of the building from commercial/office use to use as a commercial hostel with a capacity for 200 bed spaces or, the possible reduced capacity of 140 spaces, without adequate external amenity space would seriously injure the residential amenities of the area.”

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune