New Cork City Council chief targets homes, light rail and cultural revival on South Main Street
An artist's impression of the Cork South Docks proposal.
A new cultural quarter on South Main St, optimism around delivering homes for 25,000 people in the docklands, and a belief that the Counting House would be "fantastic as a library" are some of the key targets of the new head of Cork City Council.
In her first comprehensive interview as the local authority’s second female chief executive, Valerie O’Sullivan said: "There’s a window of opportunity that exists for Cork now to do things and to do them right, and we have to walk through it.
"In a lot of ways, it’s kind of now or never."
Discussing her hopes for the €353m regeneration of Cork city’s docklands, Ms O’Sullivan said even though one proposed large-scale residential development (1,300 apartments), at the Gouldings Fertiliser site on Centre Park had been dealt a blow by An Bord Pleanála "it is, ultimately I believe, deliverable under the current [10-year] planning grant".
On the delays around building apartments on Kennedy Quay (O’Callaghan Properties, a mixed-use scheme) and the former Sextant site (John Cleary Developments), Ms O’Sullivan said she believed both would go ahead.
The chief executive also said land would not have to be rezoned for housing in the docklands.
"We are looking at a population of up to 25,000 living in the docklands... There’s sufficient [land] there to deliver on that."
She said more than €353m would be needed for the docklands.
"But I think everybody knows that in Government and on the executive side."
She did not, however, want the city centre to suffer at the expense of the docklands.
"You can’t have a two-tier city, where all the bells and whistles, all the high-quality public realm construction is happening towards the east of the city, and the central island and the western end of the city isn’t of the same equivalence in appearance, quality, attractiveness. I mean we failed if that’s the project we have in 2040."
In relation to the proposed €1bn-plus Cork Luas light rail system, Ms O’Sullivan said she believed it was "totally feasible" that it would be delivered by 2040 and that it was "critical to the growth of Cork City and of the wider docklands".
The draft route for the ambitious project was unveiled this week. The proposed route runs 18km from Ballincollig in the west to Mahon Point in the east, with 25 stops along the way.
It connects key destinations such as the Munster Technology Institute’s main campus at Bishopstown, Cork University Hospital, University College Cork, the city centre, Kent train station, Cork docklands, Blackrock, and Mahon.
Asked if she thought the owners of the Marina Market intended, as they have said, to compete for a multimillion euro state aid package to deliver an event centre in the city, Ms O’Sullivan said: "I can’t say whether the proposal from that [Marina Market] site is serious or not because we haven’t received it yet, because we are not in the tender process yet.
"The big message is we are going to get an event centre in Cork or die trying. And the time is now because it’s in government policy."
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