Cork’s River Lee Hotel shows off €500,000 patio upgrade

EVEN years after it was built, Cork’s River Lee Hotel has spent €500,000 on a patio upgrade, adding an indoor-outdoor room which enhances its Leeside setting.

The investment by the Doyle Collection — who previously leased the 182-bed hotel and who bought back the building in 2013 in a €25m transaction, is already paying dividends: there’s a boost to business, and a move up the ranks just last week into No 8 position in the Top 25 Travellers Choice of Irish hotels on Tripadvisor, says River Lee Hotel manager Ruairi O’Connor.

Billed as Terrace on the Weir, the adaptable and all-weather space, with retractable roof and sides, and 16 infra-red heaters for winter and festoon lighting, adds 50-70 extra bar-menu covers to the River Lee’s accommodation.

The hotel’s more formal dining restaurant, The Weir, also has a Lee river-bend setting, by old cast iron bridge pillars left from the days of the old Muskerry trams which ran out the Western Road.

The hotel last year objected to the re-opening of the demolished Muskerry Service Station, but says manager Ruairi O’Connor while they’d be concerned about that type of use, “we’re not against development there, as a whole.”

The Terrace on the Weir got an official launch in recent days pitched for a spring and summer weather pick-up and lengthening days, but had a ‘soft’ opening at the October Jazz Festival.

That harks back to 1980s glory Jazz Festival days at the old Jurys, when the hotel car-park hosted an enormous marquee: that original, low two-storey Jurys building (the InterContinenal when built in the 1960s) utterly ignored the Lee river aspect.

Reached off the bar, the terrace had most recently served as a smoking space. But, given that it had such a river setting, facing over the fast-flowing Lee’s south channel Western Road, it made sense to capitalise further on it.

Denis Looby of Doyle Collection’s design team, Sheehan Barry Ltd, worked with London-based Alexander Waterworth Interiors on the enveloping enhancement of the light-weight add-on, reached via the bar which “can transform from an open pergola, to an enclosed conservatory in a matter of seconds,” says Mr Looby.

Finishes include dark-stained timber, heather-coloured brick cobbles on the ground, Gloster seating and sofas, untreated cedar for tables, and plants such as large tree ferns, olive trees and exotic climbers, as well as bamboo outside on the river bank itself.

Outside — for fresh-air takers and smokers — has some similar furniture, large under heated umbrellas, a fire-pit and BBQ for outdoor/summer entertaining, with scope for live music.

Previously Jurys Doyle, the group sold a number of assets in the mid 2000s, and now the Doyle Collection currently has eight hotels in five cities: Cork’s River Lee, Dublin’s Westbury Hotel and The Croke Park Hotel, as well as hotels in London, Bristol and Washington DC.

Rebuilt by O’Callaghan Properties and opened in 2008, the 182-bed hotel and spa employs 135, said Mr O’Connor, and has a 60/40 commercial/family business, with occupancy levels in the 80%s.