View to the left, view to the right from the Dublin mid-rise apartment building where I’ll be living for the next five months.
For economic development and real estate nerds, our location is really fascinating. To our left, the Port of Dublin where we see freighters and ferries and cruise ships dance around one another on the daily. To the right, the Grand Canal Docks, historic architecture mixed with modern. That’s a brewpub in the red, and a shiny sports and concert venue in the distance.
Right in front of me, twice a day, the tides come and go and I literally see “seven swans a-swimming”. I’m living in an area that is the center of the International Finance/Tech office district and home to some of Dublin city center’s most modern apartment blocks, the Docklands. This area has seen tremendous change over the years, sometimes thriving and sometimes struggling and there will no doubt be more cycles to come.
So what’s on our go-see list? A tour of the port of course. This year there are expanded behind-the-scenes events open to the public, so I don’t even have to pull any economic development strings. It’s part of an effort aimed not just at tourists, but at connecting the city and the people who live in it to the port that is just at their doorstep.
I’ll be curious to see what it’s like to take a tour like this with “civilians” and not my site selector and economic developer friends. Stay tuned.