Cork's €30m Premier Inn handed over to operator ahead of late January opening

Meanwhile, a Premier Inn team is due to arrive next week to put the final touches to the five-storey hotel, which looks set to open at the end of January, pending approval of a bar license.

This week, the main contractors, Elliot Group, handed the hotel over to the Whitbread Group-owned 3-star Premier Inn brand.

“We reached PC (practical completion) which was a big milestone for us. It means the building contract has been completed and the development handed back to the client,” said Conor Nolan, Elliot Group project manager, Munster.

The site is owned by Quakeside, who are clients of private equity firm Warren Private. The development is across the river from the proposed €106m Cork University Business School, for which UCC recently received €50m in European Investment Bank funding.

The development has given a much-needed facelift to Morrison’s Quay, where Moore’s Hotel, which ceased trading in 2005, had become an eyesore.

 It was used for a time by the Cork School of Music, but was declared derelict in 2018.

Mark Elliot, CEO of developers the Greenleaf Group, said they were “delighted with how it looks now”. “It’s a real addition to the city,” he said. The hotel, designed by MDO Architects, Dublin, is contemporary and quirky, with staggered window openings. The design is U-shaped, with the hotel bookending the protected properties. The development area c8,500 sq m, takes in numbers 9-14 Morrison’s Quay, 5-5A Fitton St, 1 Keeffe St, and adjoining lands backing onto Catherine Street and Keeffe Street.

At the centre of the development is a courtyard with composite decking to cover a water storage tank. Box planting and parking for bikes are also in evidence. The hotel does not have car parking spaces, but there are a number of nearby carparks. Any parking on the quay is likely to disappear once Cork City Council starts work on its €6m quayside plan, which includes an upgraded streetscape and flood defence works on the city's lowest-lying quays. Work is due to begin on site in Q2 next year. In the meantime, all entrance doors to the Morrison's Quay development will have their own flood defence mechanisms.

Mr Nolan said it had been challenging to develop the five-storey hotel on such a tight space (0.65 acres) and in line with strict Premier Inn brand standards.

“The brand standards dictate room size and layout. so we had to make rooms fit. It was like a game of Tetris, dropping boxes into the spaces that we had,” he said.

Four of the bedrooms have universal access (wheelchair friendly) and there are a number of interconnecting family rooms. Bathrooms came in pods, from Galway-based Castle Modular. Structural engineers on the job were MMOS. Fire consultants were Daire Byrne & Associates. Renaissance Engineering were the mechanical/electrical contractors.

The Morrison's Quay hotel is Cork City's first Premier Inn. The Whitbread Group currently has more than 1,500 open and committed beds in Ireland and believes there is network potential for 3,500.

The opening of the new hotel will reignite the Morrison's Quay site's historical links with the hospitality industry. The hotel was first listed in Guys Directory in 1893 under the ownership of a William H Moore. It was listed again in 1897 with Catherine H Moore as hotel proprietress, including Nos 12, 13 and 14 Morrison’s Quay. No 11 was occupied by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1912 and they remained there throughout the 20th century. The hotel also played a role in Cork's revolutionary era, becoming a base for Black and Tans. In 1922, 73-year-old Frances Haynes was gunned down there when she looked out a window as a car with a Lewis machine gun discharged a round from across the river.  In the early noughties, the hotel was temporarily used by Cork School of Music while their new premises was under construction across the river on Union Quay.