Tom Coughlan on his events centre plan for Cork's Marina Market

Cork developer Tom Coughlan champions his Marina Market site for the city's vital events and conference centre, highlighting logistical ease and its crucial role in attracting major conventions.

Business owner Tom Coughlan at the Marina Market. Picture: Noel Sweeney 

"Build it, and they will come — that is just the reality of it."

Cork developer Tom Coughlan is convinced his Marina Market location in the heart of Cork Docklands is the right location for the city's long-awaited events centre.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, the property owner said the development of such an asset remains a key requirement for the city, allowing it to attract concerts, conferences and other events.

Plans for such a venue were first put in place 18 years ago, but have suffered a series of setbacks and false starts. A new tendering process is now in place with Cork City Council partnering with management firm Aecom to get the project over the line.

The proposal by Bam to develop an arena on the former Beamish brewery site on South Main Street remains the most prominent but Coughlan is also engaging in the process and has set out his stall for a potential conference venue at the Marina Market. The hugely popular open food hall he established during the pandemic is part of a large property portfolio he runs through Urban Green Private.

"I believe the need is for about a four to five thousand seater," he said. "We're not going any bigger than that, and it's not going to do the biggest concerts, but it's going to do a lot of other stuff."

His team worked with London-based Níall McLaughlin Architects on their vision for the site and engaged with live entertainment company AEG which owns and operates some of the biggest arenas across Europe, including the O2 in London.

The conceptual images produced by architects working on the vision for Cork's Marina Market site in the south docks. More design work is required before a planning application can be considered.

Coughlan, a civil engineer by training, said he was not critical of other proposals but said the Marina has practical advantages, chief among them logistics, pointing out that a touring production or a major concert requires heavy goods vehicles, staging equipment and crew to arrive days in advance. 

"We have three access points here," he said. "The infrastructural ability to deliver that in the city without causing disruption is just not there. This is a better site."

Coughlan is deliberate about the scale he has in mind. He is not pitching an arena. A venue in the 4,000 to 5,000-seat range, he argues, is large enough to be commercially viable but intimate enough to generate atmosphere, and crucially, to keep the cost base manageable.

Beyond concerts, he said the gap he most wants to fill is in the conference and convention market. "Medical conferences, trade conferences, European association events — one of those a month would be transformative for Cork," he said. "The concert side will sort itself out. It's the bigger-ticket convention business that the city is really missing."

He estimated the project would cost in the region of €100m and acknowledged he would need to bring in strategic partners to deliver it. He said he has held talks with a number of potential operators, including international promotions giant AEG. "I don't have the wherewithal to do that alone," he said. "I'll bring in partners. I want it done, we can do it, let's do it."

Coughlan said he envisages Cork City Council taking a long-term stakeholding role in whatever is eventually built, and is insistent that the project should have a distinctly local identity, with Cork stakeholders driving programming decisions. "Cork versus the rest," he said. "You need a Cork interest. You put your hand up and fight for it yourself, and Cork is well able to do that."

The conceptual images produced by architects working on the vision for Cork's Marina Market site in the south docks. More design work is required before a planning application can be considered.

For now, the formal tendering process will determine whether his Marina vision gets the hearing he believes it deserves. "Speed would be important," he said. "We'd love to get cracking."

It is not the first time Coughlan has sought to make a mark on Cork's civic life. He ran in the General Election in 1997 for the Progressive Democrats. In 2008, he bought Cork City FC out of examinership, only for his tenure to unravel a year later.

Today, his focus is on retail and creating spaces for others to grow. Currently employing 100 people, Urban Green Private's portfolio today spans six retail and community properties across the island, anchored by Douglas Village Shopping Centre, which he bought in 2023 for €23m, alongside Castletroy Town Centre in Limerick, Shannon Town Centre in Clare, Bridgewater Shopping Centre in Arklow and The Quays in Newry.

The company has also moved into residential development, with the Atkins Hall development off the Lee Road called The Shipyard, currently under construction in Faro, Portugal.

Last week, French sportswear retailer Decathlon announced it would take up space in part of the Tesco outlet in Douglas Village. He said his approach to all his retail outlets is to create space for the businesses themselves to grow. 

"Local businesses are very, very challenged. Take a shoe retailer. They have to go to Milan to pick stock for next year, and guess what the market wants, while Amazon can change its entire offering overnight. It's very, very tough. I don't blame the customer. They go to what they want. But we try to see it as a partnership. We do turnover deals now, so if you're making money, I'm making money."

Urban Green's acquisitions and expansions are funded largely through alternative lenders rather than the pillar banks,  a choice that gives him flexibility, he said, but at a higher cost of capital.  Coughlan did not rule out further acquisitions but said the business is already stretched across multiple projects, pointing out that Northern Ireland is challenging. "I'm not getting any younger."

Originally from The Glen and then Whitescross, Coughlan is eager to see the city progress. "We just need to leave the handbrake off a bit in the context of creating a platform for people to have a go."

He said in other countries, giving Germany as an example, a track record of failure is seen as a prerequisite for backing an entrepreneur rather than a reason to turn them away. In Ireland, he said, the opposite is the case. "There's a shame around failure which is unnecessary," he said. "It's about having a go." 

"A guy from Ballintemple and a guy from Glanmire open a restaurant, 90% chance it will fail. You'll head off to London, and I'll head off to New York because we owe thirty or forty grand and Cork loses two entrepreneurs who would have got it right on the third or fourth time."