Railway heritage helps put Horgan’s Quay on track in €160m city build
Ireland’s rich railway heritage is at the centre of an ambitious €160m development hailed as a milestone in urban industrial conservation.
The Horgan’s Quay development in Cork by Clarendon and BAM has been described as a “game changer” for the manner in which it restored and integrated railway buildings dating from the 1850s into a lavish modern project featuring office space for 5,000 workers, a 136-bedroom hotel and 237 apartments
Three historic buildings – a limestone carriage shed, a station master’s house and a goods shed – are now being lovingly restored and integrated into the most ambitious development project in modern Cork history.
All three date back to the 1850s when they were at the hub of a new railway terminus at Penrose Quay operated by the Great Southern and Western Railway Company.
Adjacent to Kent Railway Station, the Horgan’s Quay project will not only create an entirely new Cork streetscape and river-fronted pedestrian plaza but aims to help kick-start the €1bn redevelopment of the city’s sprawling docklands.
“Conservation was at the heart of everything we wanted to do. It was our theme,” explained Ronan Downing of Clarendon Developments.