The Friday View 12/01
And we're back. Reducing speed limits, tackling dereliction and what to do with disused phone booths? Bin 'em. And, ordinary Cork people on film. The salt of the Earth.
Welcome to the first edition of the Friday View on Tripe + Drisheen for 2024, and best wishes for year ahead. Thanks for subscribing. Let’s get to it.
Council notes
The fist ordinary Cork City Council meeting of 2024 took place on Monday, January 8 and while we didn’t get to tune into this month’s lengthy meeting in which a motion was passed to abolish Irish Water (good luck with that), we’ve been sifting through the cache of documents that comes with each Council meeting. Here’s a nice idea for 2024: put them all online, instead of drip feeding bits and pieces to (some members of) the media.
In the sea of motions, minutes, questions and (at times) vague answers were three reports of note.
What to do with the relics that are disused phone booths? Well, the City Council is fixing on a plan for what to do with the once ubiquitous, handy, and humble phone booth. For over a decade, they've been about as useful as a floppy disc, but they've proved far more difficult to get rid of, largely because they are stuck in the middle of streets, and policy to remove them was slow in coming around in catching up with reality. In all, there are 20 phone boxes located across the city, with most of them being located in the city centre (we’ll have to check with Cork County Council on numbers in the county).
Eir, the private communications company, has proposed to the City Council to uproot 11 of the booths/phone boxes while keeping the remaining nine and turning them into digital displays. Of course, they do/please don’t.
Forget for a moment that the phone boxes existed and imagine walking into City Hall with an idea to install digital displays in the middle of the plaza on Paul Street, on Washington Street, or alongside the "robo trees" on St Patrick Street.
The obvious first question you would be asked is why? Well, in Eir’s case, it would be to make money through selling advertising for crisps, concerts, clothes, gadgets, and experiences, etc.
Cork City Council hasn’t signed off on Eir’s idea yet. There are a few key considerations, such as existing signage and clutter already in place on the street, and how the new advertising panels would gel with their immediate surroundings. Cities across the world are giving a lot more thought about how to declutter the public realm. The Centre for London has a conference and report launch on the very subject coming up next month, which might interest planners, but whatever the bottom dollar might be, does Cork city really need more advertising? Should we not put the focus back on heritage instead of shilling the latest gadget or product?
I am sure there are those within the City Council that would happily see all the disused booths taken up and assigned to a historical bin. Hopefully, sound heads and decluttered streets will prevail!
Slow zones and 30km/h
As part of the City Council’s efforts to drive down speed limits - and with it crashes, injuries, and fatalities - the Council has secured funding for the implementation of 30km/h Slow Zone areas throughout the city. Back in 2022, Local Area Committees selected areas to trial the new 30 km/h zones.
Slow zones are not new, with more than 3000 streets already implementing the 30 km/h according to the City Council. However, the devil is in the detail:
“‘Slow Zones’ should be established in self-contained areas that consist of Local Roads. Gateways should announce the entry and exit from a ‘Slow Zone’. These are a set of signs at an intersection to alert drivers to the reduced speed limit. The zone itself should be self-enforcing, a reduced-speed area with markings or other traffic calming.”
Self-enforcing is the key word here (other than and 30km/h). It will take a cultural shift for drivers in Ireland to learn to ease up on the accelerator, but unless we do, we risk breaking the record for road fatalities and accidents with each passing year.
You can check if your neighbourhood is included in the Slow Zones which will be rolled out over 2024.
Northwest Area
Churchfield Way Upper, Churchfield Green, Ascension Heights, Churchfield Avenue, Dunmore Gardens, Buxton Hill, Ardcullen Estate incl. Ardcullen Close, Ardcullen Grove, Willow Bank Estate, Gurranebraher Avenue, St Ritas Avenue, St Brigids Road, St Philomenas Rd, St Vincent St, Presentation Avenue, St. Annes Rd, St. Anthony’s Road
Northeast Area
Bellevue Park, Shrewsbury Villas, Farnmore, Mount Brosna, Avonmore Park, Glanamoy Lawn, Árd Bhaile, Boyne Crescent, Glencree Crescent, Liffey Park, Gweedore Avenue, Annalee Grove, Lagan Grove, Shannon Lawn, Ashmount Estate, Meelick Park, Orchards Estate Mid Glanmire Rd, Meadowbrook Estate, Glanmire
Southeast Area
The Maples Estate, Mahon, Calderwood, Montpellier Road, Greenvalley, Broadale, Meadowgrove Estate and Convent Road area, Woodview
Southwest Area
White Oaks, Harley Court, Westlawn, White Oak Mews, Coolroe Meadows, Ballincollig excluding the central spine road, including Fernwalk, Woodberry, Oldcourt, The Close, The Lawn, The Green, The Vale, The Grove, Eagle Valley, Halldene and The Rise
South central Area
Windmill Road, Parkgate, Curragh Woods, Pinecroft, Charles Daly Road, Edward Walsh Road, Marie Ville, Michael Fitzgerald Road, Cross Douglas Road, Willow Court, Cherry Drive, Belvedere Lawn, Trabeg Avenue, Mahon Avenue, Clermont
Dereliction (hasn’t gone away)
Dereliction is one of those Sisyphean tasks, but what’s a Council (and government) meant to do, except keep chipping hammering away at it. The City Council published a report on the scourge of dereliction and vacancy in December (again, a good read, why not make it public?). Council staff have been ramping up efforts to work through the process of formally identifying properties that are vacant or derelict and getting them on the derelict sites register, where they can levy it for 7% of its value.
As you can see from the infographic above, it’s a process. And some. To date, the derelict sites portfolio consists of 375 properties, with a 42% increase in the number of sites formally placed on the DSR. In 2023, the City Council collected just over €520,000 in levies (that amount included payments from previous years). See the table below. Notably, the City Council published 10 compulsory purchase orders in 2023, up from 1 in 2022. It also took ownership (vesting) of 5 properties in 2023.
News in brief
As The Echo reported this week, Progressive Commercial Construction Limited, part of the JCD Group, has decided that they will, after all, build homes on the site of the Sextant (RIP) in the City centre. JCD’s Strategic Housing Development application (SHD) was signed off in 2020 by An Bord Pleanála, but the developer decided that after knocking the pub and building affordable homes was not financially viable and ditched its original plan. Fast forward to 2024, and they will now go ahead with their plans for 200 apartments. While it’s welcome news (hello housing crisis), how are developers let off the hook?
Just up the road, on Parnell Place, Tetrarch Capital, which is sitting on investment reaching into hundreds of millions of euros, has done nothing to progress on their plans for a hotel (whether the city needs another hotel is another thing, but they’ve been given a free pass for years to sit on their investment). And then there’s BAM, which couldn’t be arsed opening a set of steps to the public. Your move City Council.
The Fireman’s Rest/The ‘Hut’
Now that the ‘hut’ is firmly back in place in the city (on Anglesea Street outside the the fire station) the question of cost comes into play. Everything has a cost, and restoring a structure as old and degraded at the Fireman’s Rest is bound to be costly? But how much did it cost? T+D heard a few rumours this week about the budget, which, to be honest sounded NUTS. The Council could just come out and publish the figures, quash the rumour machine and spare the process of a Freedom of Information request which T+D understands has been submitted.
Cork, on film.
2023 will go down as the year Twitter/X officially went to pot. Most of the blame lies at the door of billionaire Elon Musk, who in all likelihood will offload his expensive plaything this year (before or after the US election?). However, X still has the capacity, or community, to throw up some gems such as these two courtesy of Macdara Yeates and edgyodsell, unearthed by Cork Twitter King Ian Ryan.
The first is from Fr Matthew Hall and the second form the Quin Ryan on Barrack Street. Enjoy.
Out + About
Bindu Mehra is a London-based artist who examines colonialist acts of silencing and erasure, particularly in the context of the British colonisation and partition of India. Sirius Arts Centre present her film, The Inaccessible Narrative, which explores intergenerational trauma and the silencing of women’s identities in this context using personal records and archival footage. Beginning tomorrow, the film is being exhibited until next month.
Time, date, place: Saturday January 13-Saturday February 10, Sirius Arts Centre, Westbourne Place, Cobh.
Local drag artist Krystal Queer has been calling The Liberty home for most of their events since the Chambers fiasco of late 2023. 2024 began with the Gay Agenda on Wednesday and continues with Krystal’s Callouts Bingo on Sunday, which includes music, spot prizes, and a big cash prize.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Sunday January 14, The Liberty, South Main Street, Cork.
Cinesalon is a quarterly experimental film event that takes place at The Guesthouse in Shandon, curated by Maximilian Le Cain and Benjamin Burns. Their next event takes place next Thursday, January 18th, and features contributions by local filmmakers Sarah Corcoran, Laurie Shaw, Owen Kilfeather, Shelly Sarah Kamiel, Bob Gallagher, as well as a live film performance by Artem Trifomenko. Entry is free, with a suggested donation to The Guesthouse.
Time, date, place: 7pm, Thursday January 18, The Guesthouse, Chapel Street, Shandon, Cork.
This weekend is the last time you can check out the 2023 Christmas Pantos, and this year, The Everyman and CADA present Beauty and the Beast. Directed by Catherine Mahon-Buckley, the Christmas classic takes on some Cork themes, with lots of laughs and nods to local culture (first dates in Hillbilly’s!). The panto runs until Sunday, with it being your last chance to see it for another year. Tickets, times and information here.
Time, date, place: Thursday January 11-Sunday January 14, The Everyman, MacCurtain Street, Cork.
Cork School of Music’s Drama and Theatre Studies final year group present their final year show, Light Falls, a play by Simon Stephens. Directed by Regina Crowley, the play is about life in the face of death, and how love for those who have passed prevails beyond it. This is also the first production of this particular play in Ireland. Tickets and information here.
Time, date, place: 7:30pm, Tuesday January 16-Saturday January 20, Stack Theatre, Cork School of Music, Union Quay, Cork.
St Peter’s has been one of the principal spots for historical exhibitions during the last ten years of the ‘Decade of Centenaries’, celebrating the 100 years of existence of the Irish state. Reflections is a look back on this decade and runs for the month of January.
Time, date, place: 10am-5pm, Monday January 8-Wednesday January 31, St Peter’s, North Main Street, Cork.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View.
Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact us via at tripeanddrisheen@substack.com. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch. Have a lovely weekend.
In case you missed it, our interview with Ched Takashi Miyazaki and his new venture on Sheares Street.
That is useful review of some of the issues you covered in 2023.
I was briefly in Cork this week for the first time in months.
Two comments. Vehicles are still very much in control of the centre and 62-65 North Main street are still waiting for action.
Maybe this year?