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The Guinness Power Station building looks out across the Liffey, perched on a slope and surrounded by pipes, tanks, brick chimneys and even a disused windmill. It could be one of the most breathtaking additions to Dublin’s cultural spaces if it were converted into a gallery or museum. It is a marvellous icon of early twentieth century architecture, and presents two great facades. One faces to the north looking out towards the National Museum at Collins Barracks; the other looks onto James Street in the Liberties.

I’m still hoping that Guinness will hold onto James Gate and brew their dark porter for generations to come by the side of the Liffey, but ever since it was swallowed up by Diageo, I’ve had my doubts as to how long the Guinness brand will live. It’s an uneasy conglomerate that manages to hold Burger-King and Guinness in the same portfolio. Something has got to give. Certainly if the images on Google Maps are anything to go by, there’s more and more empty space emerging in the St. James Gate complex.

Surrounding the Power Station there’s also a wonderful site, and as an architectural student in the early 1980s I remember eying it up as a prime location for reinventing Dublin. There’s 500m of Quays frontage along Victoria Quay between Watling Street and Johns Road West at Heuston Station. The Power Station could be the cultural heart for an area that would benefit from new housing, new jobs and an influx of people in one of the most historic parts of the Capital.

I visited Liverpool recently. Albert Dock is great, but much of the rest of the city looks tired and weary. Streets of boarded up houses wait for something, anything to happen. The gods of shopping have created a surreal new area called ‘Liverpool One’ containing vast retail halls wrapped in an appealing veneer of architectural wallpaper, but on the day I visited Woolworths and MFI were under threat of closure. It may not be wise to bank on retail delivering a rosy economic future.

Dublin could do something different though; it could reinvent the city creating new workplaces and neighbourhoods that learn from the mistakes of Temple Bar and elsewhere. St. James’ Gate could give us a new model for living and working; hopefully greener and more child-friendly that some of the development that has occurred up and down the Quays in recent times. Next year will see the opening of Dublin’s Convention Centre in Dublin’s Docklands. Tens of thousands more visitors will have time on their hands and will be looking for some alternative to a pub crawl through Temple Bar. Let’s urge them to hop on a Luas and head for James Gate. What better way to kick things off a new wave of urban regeneration than turning the Power Station into a new cultural icon that might dispel the giant pint from its pedestal as Dublin’s number one visitor attraction.

Ciarán Cuffe is a Green Party TD for Dún Laoghaire