Cork food hub could whet appetite for growth

The decision by Cork Council to invite submissions for a revitalisation plan around food in the city centre is inspired.

The challenge is to shape a proposal that leverages the region’s heritage in agri-food while offering sustainable employment that enhances the city’s appeal as a tourism and food destination. What should they do?

In the 1700s Cork was one of the developed world’s most important trading hubs for essential foodstuffs such as butter and beef. In the early part of the 20th century it was at the centre of the most progressive agricultural co-operative movement on the planet.

All of these strands should be exploited by whoever plots a plan that elicits the support of the council in radically changing the former Capital Cinema complex on Grand Parade.

Here’s what I’d do: n Incorporate a food “markets” campus that brings part of UCC into the city centre. That provides an injection of youth that always stimulates cities while delivering a stable and progressive activity within the Cork food hub. By “markets” I mean business studies that analyse the working of the agri-food industry and the commodity sector worldwide. A lecture hall that accommodates presentations by academics and business people from around the globe could be part of the hub.

* Create an extension of the Old English Market that protects and enhances the culture of that unique establishment while avoiding a Plastic Paddy type of food and drink hall. I’d argue the market is a higher quality food tourism destination than Faneuil Hall in Boston or the fruit, flower and vegetable markets in Nice and we must find ways of expanding it without losing its intimate character.

* An incubator unit that connects fledgling Irish agri-food entrepreneurs with the large Irish agri-food corporates and relevant government agencies. Locating FoodWorks, the collaborative effort by Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia and Teagsac, in the Cork food hub would be a neat way of linking bottom up and top down elements of the food chain.

* Provide room for one micro brewery that produces a unique Cork themed range of beverages that can be sold on site and outside the Cork food hub.

n Incorporate a transport element that guarantees public transport and private parking facilities which ensure inexpensive access to the hub. One of the factors inhibiting city centre activities in Dublin and Cork at present are extortionate parking costs which are driving consumers to out of town shopping malls. The hub, connected to cheap bus access and a low cost car park, could help reverse that trend.

nA unit that promotes agri-food tourism in the Munster region by running a succession of trade shows which bring foreign tourism media into the Cork food hub to host themed events around planned festivals in the region related to agri-food such as seafood, dairy, meat and so on.

All of this will require strong leadership from within the political and establishment classes in Cork. It would be easy to let this idea drown in a sea of narrow and myopic agendas that deliver an antiseptic and barren property which produces short term employment but long term nothingness.

Cork, in my opinion, is being left behind in the painfully long but gradual recovery of the Irish economy. Dublin has its IFSC and, more recently, a fantastic IT hub centred around Google, Facebook and Linked-In.

Cork needs a focus point that offers similar hot-spot features such as job creation together with social and economic stimulants that resuscitate and enliven the city centre. A Cork food hub could be the answer.

* Joe Gill is director of Corporate Broking with Goodbody Stockbrokers. His views are personal