☕️The Friday View 30/05
Cork City Marathon comes to town, and rowers will be hot on their heels. The Lord Mayor is in Shanghai and The Echo and Examiner grow closer. Plus, our usual round-up of what's on.
Hello and welcome to the Friday View. Let’s get to it!
Plans, what plans? A week on the Galeón Andalucía, the replica sailboat that motored into Cork Harbour last week, is still docked up at Custom House Quay. The ship and the dock were a hive of activity last weekend as part of European Maritime Day. The quays around City Hall will be the same this weekend for Ocean to City – An Rás Mór, the flagship event of the Cork Harbour Festival, which sees hundreds of rowboats take off from Crosshaven and Monkstown en route to the city centre. The race finishes just below City Hall, and it’s a joyous event.
Besides being a worthy tourist attraction, the galleon replica highlights in spades the poverty of imagination when it comes to the bonded warehouses, which were formerly the property of the Port of Cork but were sold to Tower Development Properties Ltd, a commercial developer, in 2016. Tower has (had?) Giza pyramid complex-level plans to build a 34-storey hotel on Custom House Quay and a 15-storey hotel across the river at Parnell Place. Both planning applications were green-lighted.
The sixteen-bay, three-storey, pre-Famine bonded warehouses are described as a “landmark building within the city” and are so full of potential that it baffles and depresses in equal measure how their current and sole function is to serve as a backdrop for privately parked cars. Tower’s planning application for Custom House Quay will likely expire in 2026. Kevin and Marian O’Sullivan are both listed as directors of the company; the former has an address in New York, and the latter in Wilton.
What will become of the site is, at this stage, a speculator’s game. Given that the docklands are in line for redevelopment to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros, Tower just might wait it out, as BAM are doing on Sullivan’s Quay with their former tax office site and Dublin-based Tetrarch Capital are doing with their vacant sites closer by on Parnell Place.
Tetrarch Capital’s had four years to develop two vacant sites at Parnell Place. What’s happened in the meantime?
More than four years after being granted planning permission to develop a hotel on the site of listed buildings at Parnell Place in Cork city centre, Dublin-based developers Tetrarch Capital have yet…
Hindsight is a poor place to begin planning, but why ever did the Port of Cork sell the bonded warehouses to a private developer, given their historic significance and their potential as studios for artists, musical instrument makers, crafters, and producers—all desperate for a space in the city, especially in one of its most prominent and historic spots?
Horgan’s Quay realignment: In more Docklands news, the realignment of Horgan’s Quay to become Horgan’s Road is now at public consultation. The new 720-metre-long stretch of road will be set in from the riverside, on land that was until recently part of Kent Station, to accommodate new apartments and a new 690-metre riverside promenade.
The plan is to create a “green boulevard” entrance to the city, which runs immediately south of Kent Station’s carriage shed before veering out to the riverside at the junction with Albert Street. The council also plans to pedestrianise Water Street, create a public park, and tie in shared pedestrian and cycle space with the cycle routes along the quays and to Glanmire.
Long-term, the goal is for the quayside to become a liveable and sustainable residential area, while the Kent Station south car park remains as is, with plans for it to become a ‘transport interchange’ in the pipeline. The public consultation runs until Wednesday, 23 July, and can be accessed here.
Consolidation, read all about it: In the era of joined-up thinking and newsroom synergies, the only surprising aspect to the news that The Echo and Irish Examiner newsrooms are to merge is that it took so long. The Irish Times-owned titles have long been co-located under the same roof in Blackpool, but this week staff at the two dailies were told that convergence is imminent and that there would be a single news editor to oversee the two operations.
As two into one does not go – or go smoothly – that means one of the editors at The Echo or the Examiner will likely step aside. The Irish Independent reported that Examiner editor Tom Fitzpatrick will not be putting his hat in the ring, but it’s early days yet. Editing one paper is hard enough; two... well, that sounds like a two-person job. Or maybe one Dubliner and an AI editorial assistant?
It’s likely, too, that there’ll be more changes to come, especially as smaller titles usually suffer more in mergers with bigger siblings. It’s also probable that there will be changes to the publishing schedule of the print titles. Might The Echo drop become a Monday-Friday paper in its print schedule, for instance?
Open streets: Open streets return this Saturday in conjunction with the Ocean to City race. This weekend is the first Open Streets event of the summer, where people are encouraged to come into the city either by walking, cycling or public transport. Lapp’s Quay will host family-friendly live music and free games to play from 2pm to 6pm, in association with Meitheal Mara, Ocean to City and Let’s Play Cork.
Shanghai’d: Lord Mayor of Cork, Dan Boyle left for Shanghai this week to mark the 20th anniversary the Cork-Shanghai partnership, with a small delegation, following an invitation from the Mayor of Shanghai to attend the 2025 Shanghai International Friendship Cities Cooperation Forum. A representative from UCC and from Cork Chamber will travel with the mayor, as well as a council official. Other mayors attending the Forum include those of Liverpool, Mexico City, Casablanca, Athens, Kuala Lumpur, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. According to the City Council, accommodation and travel costs (except flights) have been paid for by Shanghai.
Dubs and mullets: Open Ear gets underway this weekend on Sherkin Island, with over thirty artists taking to the stage. This island festival, which has been running since 2016, it is set around one stage where all the artists perform, but there are also shows in five other locations on the island, including beaches and the old Abbey. Fear not, it’s not all Dubs, as T+D will also be in the mix (and posting on Instagram) just to add some salt of the earth to the organic festival.
Out + About
Feminist Post-punk band Mhaol are in Coughlan’s this weekend as part of their All Ireland tour with Cola and Junk Drawer. While their show on Sunday is sold out, there are still tickets for their gig on Monday. They were recently guests on the Seattle-based radio station KEXP, you can see their performance below.
Time, date, place: 8:30pm, Monday June 2, Coughlan’s, Douglas Street, Cork.
Cork PianoFest 2025 Recital Series continues today, Friday May 30, on the theme of Songs of Love and Loss featuring music by Brahms, Schubert, Rossini, Elgar, Finzi, Rodgers & Hammerstein and more from musicians Sinéad Carroll, Laura McLaughlin, Alfie Kennedy, Rory Dunne and Orlaith Sharkey, all connected through their time spent studying at MTU School of Music. More info and tickets here. Tickets: €10/€8
Time, date, place: 1pm, Friday, 30 May, Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street
Following on from the success of Making History at the Everyman, performances of Brian Friel’s works continue in the city with Lovers at the Cork Arts Theatre. Directed by Aaron O’Keeffe and starring Sarah Terry, Sam Torres, Cian Lehane and Allison Aucott, the play is split into two parts: Winners and Losers. Tickets are available here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Wednesday June 4th - Saturday June 7th, Cork Arts Theatre, Carroll’s Quay, Cork.
Strive Theatre are in Beara this weekend, performing local playwright Carina McNally’s Crow’s Old Gold in Lehanmore. The play explores the mythology of Crow’s Island, near Dursey, and the people of the area. More information and tickets here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Saturday May 31, Lehanmore Community Centre, Lehanmore, Garnish, Beara.
The Cork Harbour Festival enters it’s second weekend with it’s signature event, the Ocean to City race. As per every year, the race begins in Crosshaven, heads out to Roche’s Point, and back to the city. There are also two other races, one with runs straight to the city, and another running from Monkstown. More details on the race are available here.
Time, date, place: 3:30pm, Saturday May 31, Crosshaven and Lapp’s Quay, Cork.
Printmaker Jo Kelley presents Lithios, a celebration of the stone lithography print process, at the Cork Printmakers Gallery on Wandesford Quay. Kelley’s prints depict a collection of characters, in an imaginary world with a cast of dolls, produced through the traditional process of stone lithography. Made of limestone, each individual lithography stone has its own unique characteristics which are learned by using them. More information here.
Time, date, place: Thursday May 29 - Thursday July 24, Cork Printmakers, Wandesford Quay, Cork.
The Lavit Gallery presents two artist talks tomorrow at midday, from Michael Quane and Johanna Connor, and Orla O’Byrne. All three artists have exhibitions running at the Lavit, with Quane and Connor collaborating on Paper - Pencil - Chisel - Stone, running until June 14. O’Byrne, who is curator at St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, exhibits Sanctum at The Vaults exhibition space in the gallery until tomorrow.
Time, date, place: 12pm, Saturday May 31, Lavit Gallery, Wandesford Quay, Cork.
Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre present their biggest ever exhibition to celebrate their 40th birthday this month. The Members and Friends Exhibition is titled Uillinn / Angle, and invites artists to explore the concept of perspective angles in both a literal and conceptual, and how differing angles influence how we see and interpret the world. More information here.
Time, date, place: Saturday May 31 - Thursday July 3, Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen.
This week on T+D
Pádraig took the bus. This one.
On a bus that connects
For years now, I’ve often walked past the open top double decker red bus on Grand Parade and wondered, who the hell really needs a guided bus tour around Cork?
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. As always, any tips, comments, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact us 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 long weekend and best of luck to all the rowers and runners.