The City Arts Centre was originally the Grapevine Arts Centre and occupied a premises on North Frederick Street at the top of O'Connell Street. It came out of a group of artists/practitioners who operated on the fringe of Dublin's art world. Head massages, audio art, street events, gigs and random acts of fun characterised the group, led by founder director Sandy Fitzgerald. They had an innovative visual arts programme directed by artist John Carson, later of Artangel in the UK. This included early shows by John Kindness amongst others including an exhibition of drawings from child survivors of Hiroshima, this was organised by U2. The relationship with U2 continued in the next phase when in 1988 until 2001 the City Arts Centre occupied a building on Moss Street near Tara Street Station. U2 provided fully equipped rehearsal spaces for young bands in the basement. Over this was a cafe and theatre space initially run by Declan Gorman and above that a gallery space initially run by Tommy Weir. Sandy Fitzgerald continued as Director through to 2001. The Arts Council never fully backed the centre favouring the highly regarded Project Arts Centre, despite the City Arts Centre clear leadership profile for community arts.

The centre actually owned this building, it bought it in what had been at the time a run-down area, however, the property become rather valuable and the City Arts Centre, under the directorship of Declan McGonagle, decided to not only sell the building, but to close down its on-going programmes and engage in what it called the Civil Arts Inquiry, a two year long series of meetings, events and symposia aimed at formulating the future needs and future direction of community art. This process proved to be extremely expensive and drained a good deal of the initial capital raised through the sale of the building. As of 2005 The City Arts Centre renamed itself as City Arts and is based in Merrion Square in Dublin.