Need to knowMore than 800 new apartments – and one revamped art gallery

17:42, 25 Jul 2026Updated 17:52, 25 Jul 2026

Cork’s tallest tower rising on the south banks of the Lee(Image: YouTube: Filming Cork)

There’s a lot of construction and refurbishment going on across Leeside at the moment – and some stunning footage captured by a drone operator shows of five of the biggest ongoing projects.

The video, shared online by Filming Cork, captures progress on Cork’s tallest tower, the Marina Depot, Horgan’s Quay, the redevelopment of the Crawford Art Gallery and the recently completed Séamus Murphy Bridge. Together, these projects represent more than 830 new apartments – and one significantly revamped art gallery.

You can watch the drone vid below:

The first project on the list, the Railyard apartment block, has been flying up on the southside of Cork city in the past few months. The 25-storey building was originally set to be the tallest in Ireland, until that title was snatched earlier this year by plans for a development in Dublin. Nevertheless, if you’ve been through Cork city centre recently, the impressive towering block – on the site of the former Sextant bar – is impossible to miss.Next up is the Marina Depot, where 337 new homes are under construction. It’s just one of several development’s in Cork’s Docklands, with thousands of new homes and jobs to be created for Leeside.Horgan’s Quay is another project making a major aesthetic change on the banks of the Lee. This €140m development is set to provide 302 new homes, and is being built around one of Cork’s ‘ghost’ train stations on the north side of the river.Meanwhile, the Crawford Art Gallery has been closed since September 2024 as it undergoes a big overhaul, which aims to increase the overall size of the gallery and add a new top floor to the historic city centre building. The project includes a 32m extension, a new main entrance, landscaping, accessibility improvements and a new restaurant which will open out onto Half Moon Street.This particular project – set for completion by 2028 – has seen its budget swell, ballooning from €28 million to almost €94 million.Finally, the drone video takes a look at Séamus Murphy Bridge, which opened earlier this month, 14 months after it was originally installed, linking the proposed Cork Events Centre site to the quays (though it may be some time before we get a drone video of the Events Centre itself under construction).

The video gives a tantalising look at how Cork city will improve over the coming years – but one popular Scottish YouTube recently took a walking tour around the island of the city, giving an outsider’s view on the pleasant parts of Leeside that are easy to overlook if you’re in and out of the centre every day.

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