Michael Moynihan: Lost in a haze of event centre logic, I have some helpful ideas
For years now we’ve all presumed that the centre would be built where the sod-turning photo call took place back in 2016, the old Beamish brewery site. The possibility that it may in fact go somewhere else entirely is intriguing. Picture: Larry Cummins
Brace yourself. I approach with tidings of the Cork Event Centre.
Come back. There are developments. Kind of.
This week Ann Murphy reported that a preliminary business case for the event centre has been approved; she wrote that, according to a memo seen by the , the “‘Cork City Council Project Development Board for the centre has proposed a delivery model, which means the council will partner with a project delivery partner responsible for the provision of land, partial funding, and all activities related to design, construction and operation’.”
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Ann added: “The next step is for the Department of Housing, Heritage, and Local Government to write to Cork City Council to notify the local authority that approval has been granted. This will pave the way for the project to enter into the tendering process and the ‘finalisation of a detailed project briefing’."
I know. Your will drains away with every word. Every mention of a ‘step’ and every reference to the ‘project’, produces a physical reaction, and I don’t mean a dopamine hit. More of an involuntary eye-roll.
Who among us has not said to ourselves — once a year or so — that it’s time to take a keener interest in this farrago? You square your shoulders, set your jaw and say, "this time I’ll concentrate, and I’ll work out the exact sequence of what’s going to happen, the notifications and the tendering and the briefing, and procurement and the department of this and the local authority that and..."
Then you wake up and half an hour has gone by, and you’re head down on the table in a small lake of drool. The subject has defeated you once again.
That, my friends, is the eldritch power of the event centre, a zone in which money means nothing and language means less. Time is particularly meaningless here.
It’s now so long since the notorious sod-turning photo call that bands which might have actually graced the event centre have formed, starred, toured, broken up, reformed, broken up again, gotten cleaned out in divorces and toured again, broken up once more, cashed in with a second greatest hits album, and are now contemplating a final hurrah to pay for the holiday home.
And we remain years away from a venue that might host one of their performances. I use the term ‘years’ deliberately; having waited over 10 years already, who wants to tempt fate by starting to measure the delay in decades?
By the way, that Cork City Council Project Development Board, as revealed here last year by Eoin English, consists of Brian Geaney (Cork City Council), Gary O’Doherty, (Department of Local Government), Conor Healy (Cork Chamber); Aaron Mansworth (Cork Business Association); Dr Jean van Sinderen Law (UCC); Ciara Murphy (Chief State Solicitor’s Office); and Fiach Mac Conghail (The Digital Hub).
Would that group benefit from another voice or two, such as someone in the business of filling a venue in Cork every week? I ask because of another story in the paper this week, Martin Claffey’s interview with Brian Fenton, CEO of the Everyman Theatre.
In a wide-ranging chat, he made some astute observations about the event centre. For instance, the general view seems to be that the capacity of this magic space will be between 5,000 to 6,000, which is a sizeable venue by any measurement. Is that too big?
“There's no question from my point of view that a 3,000, 4,000, 5,000-seat venue won't get the West End shows — it's too big,” Brian said.
“It’s too big for those big musicals — the stage is too big, the auditorium, even the level of risk... if you get the scale right, you'll have year-round activity. But with the event centre in Cork, there is a lot of voices, and it has become this big, big, big arena.”
Hm. This is something that I haven’t seen raised before.
If the venue ever materialises, it’ll need to wash its face with a variety of attractions, and all year round at that. If the proposed capacity is too big to sustain a variety of attractions, though, that’s not an encouraging thought, and effectively excluding one potentially lucrative revenue stream, such as the West End musicals cited by Brian Fenton, would be a serious handicap.
He also said the Everyman had been invited into the formal consultancy on the event centre and had given an opinion, adding: “We have been told clearly that there isn't a site identified yet, and there is a whole process to go through.”
Hm (once again).
For years now we’ve all presumed that the centre would be built where the sod-turning photo call took place back in 2016, the old Beamish brewery site. The possibility that it may in fact go somewhere else entirely is intriguing.
Readers will be aware of the proposal by local developer Tom Coughlan to build an event and conference centre in the south docklands part of the city centred on his Marina Market site.
That certainly offers more space than the South Main Street venue, something which readers may want to consider in light of more observations from Brian Fenton: “If it is the wrong site, you will have producers who decide not to go there because the site is too complicated. Certain sites will work far better logistically than others.”
Articulated lorries carrying band equipment, stage sets, and lighting rigs would find it easier to get into a venue on or around the Monahan Road than on South Main Street. Even allowing for the wide open spaces of the new Bishop Lucey Lorry Park.
Any reader who’s been to the 3Arena in Dublin will be familiar with the spacious layout of that venue, which looks almost tailor-made for lorries such as those mentioned above; they slip in with their loads and, after the gig, collect those loads again and head for the nearby port or motorway.
Difficult to see that being replicated as smoothly in South Main Street.
One final point: a couple of years back, the challenge of filling large venues in Britain was discussed — in particular, the dwindling number of bands and acts capable of packing out those venues.
At the time, Mark Davyd of the Music Venue Trust told magazine: “What are these [arena] companies doing to ensure that there are headliners on stage for them in five, 10, 20 years’ time?”
Davyd said such arenas depended on small venues and local promoters and local communities to produce the next generation of talent, suggesting promoters impose a 50p levy on each ticket sold at large venues and arenas, which could then be shared with smaller venues.
So: a smaller event centre, to be built at a new location in the Docklands (with the Beamish site used instead for a new library building worthy of a European city). A tiny levy to energise the local scene.
Feel free to add those points to the business case, folks. Always happy to help out.
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