Clearing of the site has commenced, Some say it is purely to keep in line with the planning deadlines,
They do shit like that all the time.
I live in Bangor, the town centre has been run down for 15 years.
A massive shopping centre in the town centre was built in the 90's, and had killed the high street, then the shopping centre closed down when they built one outside the town. Now there's no post office or book shop left in the town, there are > 80,000 people living there, and I'd say Fermoy has a far more vibrant commercial centre. All hotels are closed down there, there is no big employer in the town, or even a medium sized company to employ a lot of people, everyone seems to commute to Belfast for work. The only big employer, is actually the council.
Now they're on about a £500m project to rebuild half the seafront, they've been on about this since the 1980's. This will come from private funding apparently.
The plans look terrible to be honest, lazy and soulless, they would have been typical in the 90's like, think of the capital cinema project levels of underwhelming. This project will probably fall through again and not materialise, but the council got a grant of £15m to clean up the areas around the project, and they've cracked on with it before the funding is pulled.
Still the council are so excited about this, that they've dug up the primary carpark in the town, to put outdoor spaces there, closed one of the public play parks in the town, which will now become fee paying, and stuck a much smaller park in the old carpark.
They've also bought these light based shadow statues, like this one one of them seen while on holidays in Spain.
you can see it here
Looks cool right?
Any problem with that?
Well - yes, during the summer, when you'll actually use this outdoor space, it's daylight until 11pm, so it won't actually work.
In fact, there is a a 12 week period where there is no proper "night" time, so it won't really work for the busiest 3 months of the year.
None of them thought about this, before they paid £1.3m for these sculptures.
Four businesses are closing in this town per month at the moment, the town looks like the walking dead, with unionists rather than Zombies.
www.irishexaminer.com
