Waterfront News

Announcing the Waterfront News

Dublin is a charming city for both locals and visitors, offering an exciting mix of things new and old. In fact, just a few steps from the city’s center is an area alive with culture and activities—The Docklands. In this area, you’ll find historic buildings, amazing modern architecture, theatre, art galleries, river sightseeing trips by boat and so much more.

Waterfront News is here to tell you what’s happening in this area.

History of the Docklands Area

This area is steeped in history and has always been a working class area, with restless periods of upheaval. The Docklands dates back to the early 1800s, and you’ll find old brick buildings, warehouses and houses dating from that time period. It’s been a very active place in Dublin’s history.

Back in the 1800s, East Wall consisted only of fields that had been reclaimed from the sea. Later, a railway station was built on the North Wall Quay which brought people escaping from the great famine of the 1840s to the area.

In the early 1900s, the Docklands was a hotbed of revolutionary and socialist activities. Then in 1913, about 60 East Wall families were evicted by the Merchants Warehousing Company during the Lockout. Later, in 1916, the Irish Citizen Army was involved in the War of Independence. A famous local playwright, Sean O’Casey wrote great plays covering this era, and his plays are still performed in the theatre that bears his name in East wall.

Later in the 70s and 80s, local activist Tony Gregory came to an arrangement with Taoiseach Charles J Haughey to support his government in exchange for investment in the area.

To this day, social problems continue, but this certainly isn’t due to lack of money in the area. New tech companies have moved into the area including HubSpot, Salesforce and Google, as has the Central Bank, which has led to sponsorship of local sports teams, schools and other local organizations which do great work to break the cycle of poverty, drugs and violence in the area.

Dublin’s Docklands

Dublin’s Docklands area has become revitalized through urban renewal. With the advance of work starting in the 80s on the IFSC (the International Financial Service Centre), the landscape north of the river Liffey began to gradually change from warehouses to glass and steel office buildings and modern apartment buildings.

The South Side of the river, the Grand Canal Dock (often referred to as Google Docks) has seen an influx of tech workers. Development has also branched out into other areas North of the Liffey. With the influx of new people, the sense of community can be hard to maintain.

Why the Waterfront News?

When I initially arrived in the area about 6 years ago, I lived in an apartment with my family. I remember Halloween when we took our daughter out to trick or treat and knocked on apartment doors in our building, but got no answer. At one point, I was looking down from the apartment at the houses below and felt too much like an outsider to go down and knock on the doors where the local kids were trick or treating.

Since that time, we’ve moved into a house and have gotten to know the neighbors. We learn of the goings on in the community by word of mouth, which is the method used since ancient times. People communicating with one another and passing on information is part of being a community. My children came home from school with flyers for East Wall History group, and I learned of a historic publication called "The Waterfront". It was a union newspaper from the 1960s. This is what sparked the idea for the Waterfront News.

What We Do

The Waterfront News was put together as a place to get the word out and promote the waterfront areas of Dublin, which includes the communities of East Wall, Ringsend, North Wall and Grand Canal Dock. The area is rich with entertainment of all types and is fast becoming an area where people coming to Dublin choose to visit and to live.

The “blow ins” from outside the area have a lot to offer the community, while the community also has a lot to offer them. The idea of the Waterfront News is to help locals and new people moving to the area to develop community and help one another. Not only that, but to come together and enjoy what’s on offer in the Docklands.

The Waterfront News is a place to share events, to bring people together to learn about the area and enjoy all it has to offer. The goal is to cover all local events, with a focus on the local grassroots events.

The Future

Our future plans for the Waterfront News include development of a classified ads section—this is in the pipeline. Later, we’d like to create a forum to allow the community to interact online. Right now, the plan is to be the best resource to find out what’s going on in the area and to give smaller venues and community driven events a level of exposure to match the bigger venues.

Building bridges and maintaining a sense of community are our goals for the Waterfront News. This is the reason we began the site and what drives our continued development. We want to be a site that lets people know what’s going on around them—what’s on offer right in their own backyards.