Bono and The Edge won a four-year legal battle to reshape their old-fashioned Dublin hotel, the Clarence, into a futuristic landmark - a decision that appeared to fly in the face of Ireland's conservative planning laws.
Ireland's planning board approved a $235-million plan produced by British architect Lord Norman Foster to gut and drastically expand the riverside hotel. The new complex would more than triple the number of its rooms to 166 and would feature a massive, floodlit glass roof atrium - dubbed "the flying saucer."
The opponents of this ambitious plan say that, in essence, they were given the go-ahead basically because of who they (Bono and Edge) are.
The planning authority ordered the developers to preserve the facades of six buildings: the 1930s Art Deco original hotel and five other adjacent Georgian and Victorian properties being swallowed up by the future Clarence. It also ordered that an archeologist be on the construction site at all times.
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