TRADERS in Bandon are furious about the planned closure of the town’s main thoroughfare for two months from June to August, to allow for road surfacing and traffic calming measures.
Those that spoke with The Southern Star say business is already down by at least 40% due to ongoing works on South Main Street’s footpaths, which meant the removal of parking on the street, as well as a general lack of parking in the town.
They’re also demanding an urgent rates reduction, to reflect what they’re predicting will be further challenges caused by the eight-week closure.
Sinéad Seaman, who has a hair salon on the street, organised a meeting for concerned traders last week after they were informed of the closure, which is to allow for road surfacing and raised tables (used to calm traffic and to provide pedestrian crossings) as part of Bandon’s enhancement works.
The Council say this duration is needed for the raised tables to ‘cure’ however, traders say they don’t have the luxury of time
‘You’d resurface the road from Cork to Dublin in that amount of time – this is a disgrace,’ said Anthony O’Donovan of Denis O’Donovan family grocers.
‘There’s not even any need for traffic calming measures, because the street is now so narrow because of the footpaths, the only thing you can go down it on is a bike. The entire town is down in business and there’s no respect at all being shown to us as rate payers.
‘Bandon is a trading town, not a tourist town and if you lose people it will be very hard to get them back.’
Shane Spillane of The Market Bar said that in the seven months they’ve been in business, they’ve been struggling.
‘Since January it’s like someone has switched the lights off. We can only take this for so long. It’s devastating. The street won’t need calming measures because there’ll be no one in town and that’s a fact. In January we employed 26 people and that’s now down to 21. We won’t be in here in a few months’ time if things continue like this,’ he said.
Jacinta Warren of Warren Allen Collections described the situation as ‘disastrous.’
‘But the biggest disaster is the fact that there’s no parking in the town which means there’s fewer people coming in. At least after the flooding we were back trading after a week, but people are avoiding coming into town now and I can understand why.’
Sinéad Seaman said that they all acknowledged that work has to be done, but ‘there has to be an alternative to closing the street for eight weeks.’ The town, she said, is ‘crying out for a car park.’
‘That should have been sorted before all of this. I’m hearing from my clients constantly that there’s nowhere to park or that they never know what streets are open or closed,’ she said.
Hilary O’Farrell, of O’Farrell’s newsagents and secretary of Bandon Business Association agreed that parking was the key issue.
‘I’m certainly not looking forward to the street closure, and like everyone else our business is down but I think we need to hold tight now and just get through it, and put our energy into promoting the town for when the works are completed.’
Cllr Ann Bambury, one of many local representatives to attend the meeting, agreed ‘the risk of further closures is very real, which would be detrimental to the fabric of our community.’
The council have said that all footpaths on the street will be complete by early July and that all works on the street should be ‘substantially complete’ by the end of August.
Once works on South Main Street come to an end, the council will continue along Market Street before a moratorium in Christmas 2025. Work will begin again next January, for a predicted finish date of early 2026.
Previously it said it had looked at 15 sites for a car park which needed further investigation and that each had different complexities to be explored.
