The former Rialto cinema in Dublin is 90 years old this year. When it opened in November 1936, it was the largest suburban cinema in the State and capable of seating 1,600 people, with 200 car parking spaces at the back and 100 bicycle racks.
The beautiful art deco facade with a stepped motif was of its time, adding a frisson of Hollywood glamour to the working class suburbs of inner city Dublin.
The Rialto lasted as a cinema until the early 1970s and was then converted into a car showroom, which closed in 2008. It has lain empty since then.
It is now one of the worst examples of suburban dereliction in Dublin amid no shortage of contenders. The telltale signs of dereliction are there – the buddleia sprouts from every crevice, the sold sign dating back to 2017 that has never been removed. Beer bottles pile up on the corner along with the weeds. Rubbish and graffiti festoon the building and its surroundings.
The cinema’s footprint extends to 6,000sq m (64,000sq ft) of space that could be utilised for housing. There could hardly be a more advantageous location.
It’s within a 2km walk of St Stephen’s Green with numerous bus routes and the Luas within a short walking distance.
You can see the roof of the new national children’s hospital from the entrance to the old building. It is envisaged the hospital will have between 3,700 and 4,000 employees. Where will they all live?
The Rialto cinema site is the only property on Dublin City Council’s derelict sites register that has accumulated more than €1 million in fines from the derelict sites levy, according to a study by architect Rob Cross, who operates the site derelictsites.com.
An Irish Times report from 1936 when the Rialto cinema opened
He has calculated that the owners of the Rialto cinema owe €1.25 million from the levy. He bases this on the council’s own August 2021 valuation of the site at €3.5 million, with the 7 per cent levy accruing from the time it was put on the derelict sites register in January 2021.
Dublin City Council said it did not have a policy of releasing information in respect of the levies due on individual sites.
However, in a response to local Sinn Féin TD Máire Devine, the council confirmed that the levy has been charged on the site since 2022, “but has not been paid to date. The council is currently considering legal action for recovery of these debts, but, in any event, unpaid levies are registered as a charge against the land.”
If the levy was charged from January 2022, the outstanding money owed on the site to the council would now be more than €1 million, even before considering that unpaid fines accumulate interest of 1.25 per cent per month.
The Rialto cinema site is owned by Molaga Capital based in Lapp’s Quay in Cork. The registered owner is Thomas de Witte, a Belgian businessman who paid €2.7 million for the site in 2017.
In November 2019, Molaga Capital was granted planning permission for a 317-bedroom student accommodation complex, with a cafe, gym and outdoor garden area included.
Cork-based Barry Harte of Harte Property and Investment was brought in to project manage the site. His firm designed a student accommodation scheme that retained the facade of the building.
The Rialto cinema building has an art deco facade with a stepped motif. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/Collins
The timing of the planning permission grant could hardly have been less propitious, he said.
“It was a €50 million scheme. We were fully funded. We were ready to build out but then Covid-19 came in early 2020 and scuppered that.
“Immediately after that, inflation kicked in. We effectively ended up in a situation with inflation, increased interest rates and yields that were going in the wrong direction that the funds were no longer interested in backing the student accommodation scheme.
“Effectively our planning ran out for student accommodation so that frightened away the investor.”
However, Molaga Capital is “almost there” with an alternative investor, he added.
Harte does not deny that the site has probably accumulated derelict site levies of €1 million, which will keep rising while the site remains unbuilt.
“I hate to see derelict sites around the place and I totally get the Government policy that derelict sites should be developed,” he said.
“The trouble with the derelict sites levy is that it’s more stick than carrot. It is a burden hanging over sites, which effectively makes it harder to make the economics work.
“To be fair to Dublin City Council they have a job to do. The bigger picture in play is that we want to make this work as a residential scheme with the children’s hospital around the corner. We have an investor here who is willing to spend up to €65 million to €75 million.”
In the meantime, residents are fed up with the inertia around the scheme. Michael Judd, who lives two doors from the site, said: “We have a great community here, but the whole area is being pulled down by dereliction. I can’t understand why we are still looking at this.”
Devine, a long-time resident of Rialto, said the council should consider compulsorily purchasing the site if it is not built on in the coming years.
“If I could, I would put a big banner across the building saying, ‘this is disgraceful, DCC get your finger out’,” she said.
“Let’s be bold and brave and just CPO [compulsory purchase order] it. We’re so paralysed and we sit and we wait and CPO is exactly there for that. The site could be a gem within the Rialto/Dolphin’s Barn area.”