About 55 people attended a public meeting in Clonakilty on Tuesday evening, where discussion were held on the possible use for a block of vacant Council-owned buildings on Kent Street in the town.
The team behind mapping out a future for the area, said they will take the ideas and suggestions from the workshop, in order to develop a framework for an Integrated Urban Strategy (IUS) for the street.
Cork County Council has secured €200,000 of THRIVE (Town Centre First Heritage Revival Scheme) funding for this phase of the project, and a strategy must be devised by the end of June, in order to and ahead of securing any national or EU funding for the project.
The attendance was lower than at last month’s meeting, and some attendees said there was a lack of publicity of it.
Others observed that there was a lack of a younger demographic represented at the workshop.
Two local councillors, Daniel Sexton (Ind Ire) and Isobel Towse (SD) attended, but no local TDs were present at the public meeting.
Tara Kennedy (Workshop Bantry) outlined the feedback from a public survey, which had 319 responses.
Over 74% of those surveyed said that the old fire station is of most interest to them as a space.
Some of the suggestions for the use of these buildings, which includes the old fire station, ranged from a community café, theatre space, market space, gallery space, concert space and green areas.
George Dundon, leading design consultant with Brady Shopman Martin, who have been appointed to deliver the IUS, told attendees that they have to be aware of the needs of everyone when it comes to this project.
‘It’s important to remember that what we develop is not going be a detailed plan. It’s going to be a spatial framework which also gives us the flexibility when it comes to different funding streams where we have something adaptable and can pick up,’ he said.
‘It’s effectively a concept and we are holding it back a bit to keep the flexibility.’
Cork County Council senior executive officer Noreen O’Mahony said this document, which has to be completed by the end of next month, will help them to secure funding to move onto the next stage of the project.
‘The first step is to get the framework of where things should go and then how to adapt it to get funding.’
The next public meeting will take place at the end of May.
