Nests for guests in €4m 'tree-star' investment in Cork city's lofty Montenotte 

Hotel branches out with urban resort woodland suites suspended and cantilevered under woodland tree canopy

Happy landings: one of the five 'nests' among the 23 woodland suites  €4m investment in Cork's Montnette Hotel's six acres of city grounds

A hotel with the very best views out over Cork City is branching out to a whole new bird’s eye level, with treehouses and “nests” under the canopy of the trees in its acres of elevated grounds at Montenotte.

Taking the long view: Montenotte Hotel's terrace and new, 2021 built  Glasshouse cocktail bar

It’s the latest multimillion-euro phase of development, part of a further €4m spend at the top-rated Montenotte Hotel, by family owners Frankie and Josephine Whelehan.

They first started an initial and imaginative €5m upgrade of the landmark hotel, which is situated high above Cork City, after taking it over fully in 2016. The hotel overlooks Cork’s quays, docklands, suburbs, and Lee river valley, with the views stretching for miles.

Cantilevered woodland suites with city and quays backdrop

This next, thinking-outside-the-box investment will see 23 highly individual “green” suites added to the hotel’s offerings, ranging from 40sq m to 55sq m. They include five elevated or suspended “nests”, four cantilevered suites, and 13 woodland suites below the treeline, along with a 90sq m services/breakfast building.

As an original part-owner of the Montenotte Hotel, well-known hotelier Frankie Whelehan (at one stage he headed up the Choice Hotel group of 20 hotels, employing more than 2,000 staff) initially oversaw the mid-2000s addition of 26 corporate suites and leisure centre to the 107-bed hotel, known to previous generations as the Country Club Hotel.

Existing sun and city viewing terrace at the Montenotte Hotel

More recently the couple (who also developed the niche boutique Wilder Hotel in Dublin) added an in-house cinema, as well as Cork’s coolest room — a panoramic outdoor dining and viewing sun terrace — followed by a rooftop cocktail bar, The Glasshouse (summer 2021) at The Montenotte Hotel .

They also spent €600,000 landscaping some of the vertiginous grounds under the guidance of horticulturist Dominick Cullinane. Now, they are digging deeper, and going a step further: deep down the gardens and up into the trees.

They’ve recently got full planning permission for 23 small hideaways in the property’s six acres — the one-time private pleasure grounds of merchant families who owned the 19th-century mansion here, Lee View House, and Bellvue House above St Luke’s Cross.

The Whelehans are adding 21st-century rooms with bird’s eye views, some of them up to 20ft (6m) above ground level, with construction work being outlined on the 23 suites/pods/nests/treehouses: a proper name has yet to be settled upon.

The couple used the architectural services of Pat Hogan and John Burgoyne of Henry J Lyons — a major design firm better known for office blocks, apartments, and hotels.

Here, instead, they’ve thought small, and intimate for their left-of-field, bottom-of-the-garden plans to add the most unique of hospitality spaces to the collection at the Montenotte Hotel — currently rated No 1 out of 35 hotels in Cork by Tripadvisor.

Existing entrance: the bedrooms blocks will get an external makeover too in future phases

“Essentially, we are absolutely committed to making the Montenotte a stand-out hotel in Ireland that will be design-led, customer-led and, above all, a fun place to be,” Mr Whelehan told the Irish Examiner on a winter morning’s walkabout on the elevated, edge-of-city property.

It’s already graced by some century-plus evergreen oaks and a magnificent spreading beech retained amid the evolving hotel buildings, terraces, and a new glass balustraded granite-stepped walkway linking the hotel to the highly glazed cocktail bar, The Glasshouse.

Fully serviced and catered, and like some other European and Scandinavian places offering overnights under trees, the ‘tree-star’ offer will claim eco-credentials, have valet-driven electric golf buggy access for guests to their novel quarters, which will include five “nests”, suspended from trees, while other new additions will be set closer to the ground, or on cantilevered platforms.

Garden designer Diarmuid Gavin at Reawakening, the sculpture exhibition in association with the Kildare Gallery at The Montenotte Hotel where local designer Dominick Cullinane oversaw the €600,000 spend on the gardens' first phase. Picture: Darragh Kane

The hotel and existing corporate short-term lets currently employs c 150 staff.

This further €4m investment comes after the Whelehans invested €9m in Dublin’s The Wilder. They also own First Choice Purchasing Group, which initially serviced the hospitality sector but has added care and nursing homes, and has dived into personal protective equipment sourcing and provision during the past two years of Covid-19 pandemic, with a gross turnover reported at €120m.

Newly appointed Montenotte Hotel general manager Frits Potgieter and Mr Whelehan say the idea is to make The Montenotte an urban resort destination like no other in Ireland. They say it will not just appeal to the guests from the Irish market but also to visitors from further afield, expecting guests to wing their way from the UK and further afield, who want to spend a few days’ downtime luxuriating in the woodland suites.

Mr Potgieter joins the Montenotte Hotel after stints most recently at the five-star Muckross Park Hotel in Killarney, Co Kerry, and the Imperial Hotel, Cork, between 2015 and 2018.

A South African native, he’s married to a Cork woman, which he quips sealed his fate to come to work in her native city.

Prior to coming to Ireland, Mr Potgieter spent time in the UK, running the likes of the Doyle Collection’s Kensington Hotel in London, as well as the Marylebone Hotel for the same group. Prior to that, he was with the Red Carnation Group’s Milestone Hotel & Residences and the Chesterfield Mayfair Hotel, also in London.

Creating and running nests, pods, and treehouses wasn’t always a given, apparently, until coming home to roost in Cork.