[moceri]

I think they should install the Infamous "SKY GARDEN" that the City Council wants to rack up €1.8m to complete. Tim Lucey, the City manager reckons that thousands of tourists will flock to Cork just to see the garden;.... A new seventh wonder of the world, like the hanging Gardens of Babylon.

I think they should call it "The Emperor's New Garden". It is bound to attract attention and noteriety, if only as a Monument to the Folly of Cork City Council and the Ego of Diarmuid Gavin. The citizens of Cork can sleep soundly in their beds, knowing their Household Tax is being wisely spent in these austere times.

[SaveMarinaPark]

The City Manager's report is now going forward to the full council for approval. You can read our response here:

http://savemarinapark.com/index.php/managers-report/

[SaveMarinaPark]

Our April Newsletter is out

http://savemarinapark.com/index.php/newsletters/

[SaveMarinaPark]

The City Council will be voting on the proposal to gift the GAA with public land next Monday evening.

We welcome all those who wish to demonstrate to the City Council that land which was bought for public use should be kept for public use and not handed over at a loss to the City's finances. (It is estimated that the loss on the sale of the land would be equivalent to 45,000 household charges - almost the entire City).

So come along and help Save Marina Park - Cork City Hall - assemble at 5.15 Monday 16th April.
--
Cork doesn't have enough public parks. Don't give the Showgrounds away and lose another park before it's even built! www.savemarinapark.com @savemarinapark

[opus]

I sent an email to the councillers in Cork South Central to lobby for this but sadly got the following bounces, doesn't fill me with hope for the other emails

Sean_Martin@corkcity.ie
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.

fiona_kerins@corkcity.ie
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.

What's the point of the councillors having email if they never read it

[SaveMarinaPark]

It's very annoying - has happened on many occasions.

Some councillors reply quite fast, some are a bit slower and a good few don't reply at all.

[gubbie]

Originally Posted by gpf101

I always use the tunnel, never go near the city centre when I go to a game. It's no more central than the stadiums in a lot of other cities.

I sympathise about the litter, I never knew that was an issue. I can't understand who'd throw litter around the place after a game.

As a resident of the area I have to say that I have never noticed any significant rubbish problems when the GAA was on. Funderland brings far worse (if you notice a house with sick outside, that's mine).

Any green areas in the past few years has been swallowed up by developers trying to cash in on its proximity to town. Pairc Ui Rinn is practically around the corner. I don't know why they need another

Best of luck with the protest tomorrow

[florodon2]

Seems to me that the manager/officials of the City Council don't give a flying *uck about local residents. Proven by their covert attempts to sell off and privatise the Tank Field.

[SaveMarinaPark]

Thanks for all the comments.

The City Council voted on the matter last night.

We listened to many speeches which dwelt predominantly on how good the GAA is, how much it has done for children and how Cork needs the Centre of Excellence to be in the middle of our park so that it can win All-Irelands.

There were also speeches which dealt with the difficulties that the severance of our park will cause and with the anti-social behaviour that we witness after each match.

A number of councillors raised objections based on the procedures - they were expected to vote without any plans being available.

In the end the vote was 21 for, 9 against and the GAA can now proceed to buy the land for a song and apply for planning permission.

Needless to say we will be reading the planning application thoroughly.

[namloc1980]

I just don't get the GAA's and the Council's obsession with this Centre of Excellence down at the Pairc. Cork has a large number of excellent GAA facilities. In West Cork Clonakilty have an awesome set up. Mallow have a superb complex and in the City Nemo have a fine complex.

Pairc Ui Chaoimh obviously needs to be upgraded but I would much rather see a Cork GAA museum built adjacent to it which could be integrated into the Marina Park with statues etc of Cork GAA and sporting legends. These would be a focal point and awe inspiring for the youth of Cork. Instead we'll get this "Centre of Excellence" which will only be open to a the few and not the many.

[KCAccidental]

Originally Posted by SaveMarinaPark

Thanks for all the comments.

The City Council voted on the matter last night.

We listened to many speeches which dwelt predominantly on how good the GAA is, how much it has done for children and how Cork needs the Centre of Excellence to be in the middle of our park so that it can win All-Irelands.

There were also speeches which dealt with the difficulties that the severance of our park will cause and with the anti-social behaviour that we witness after each match.

A number of councillors raised objections based on the procedures - they were expected to vote without any plans being available.

In the end the vote was 21 for, 9 against and the GAA can now proceed to buy the land for a song and apply for planning permission.

Needless to say we will be reading the planning application thoroughly.

on your site you said that you had the support of Cllr Ted Tynan (WP), but according to the Echo he voted in favour of the motion. Can you confirm and give us any reason why he did so?

[SaveMarinaPark]

Originally Posted by KCAccidental

on your site you said that you had the support of Cllr Ted Tynan (WP), but according to the Echo he voted in favour of the motion. Can you confirm and give us any reason why he did so?

The site had now been updated to reflect turncoat Ted Tynan decision.

[SaveMarinaPark]

It has been a while since an update but we now have a graphic on our site ( www.savemarinapark.com ) showing the extent of the planned development and how it does destroy the planned park and also some existing amenties eg the Island in the Atlantic Pond.

[SaveMarinaPark]

Last Thursday we had an initial consultation meeting with Cork City Council and OKRA (the Company that won the tender for the design of the park).

This is the report:


This is just a brief up-date of a meeting we had on Thursday 17th May 2012 with Cork City Council and the OKRA Landscape Architects they have appointed to carry out the design of the proposed Marina Park.
The meeting was one of a number they had undertaken with various groups on the day who live in the immediate vicinity of the Marina and the proposed Marina Park.

At the outset it is worth saying that the project team’s willingness to engage with what you might call the ‘stakeholders’ was evident and this made a refreshing change to what we had experienced in relation to the whole sell-off of lands/re-zoning process where it was a real case of ‘their way or the highway’. That said, we were a bit wary that their version of consultation might just be a case of listen-nod-sympathise-ignore as is often the case when it comes to public consultation. We made this fear known to them.

The project group told us that this meeting would be followed up by a wider consultation with a broader section of the community. We thought that this was a good idea as the more they understand about how people (both the immediate residents and the wider community) use the existing areas and how they want the areas developed to meet their needs, both now and in the future, the more acceptable will be their proposals.

Two of our local councillors attended the meeting as well; Cllr. Des Cahill (FG) and Cllr. Denis O’Flynn.

There wasn’t much in the way of detailed plans and all OKRA had to display were their conceptual designs (the ones they’d sketched up in their bid to win the work). These are the drawings that were recently featured on this site and were shown in the Evening Echo. We emphasised that the blatant lack of an open space in these drawings where a family or friends could picnic, puck a ball, throw a Frisbee, fly a kite or just sit about and read under our rarely seen sunny skies was not acceptable to us.

If you’ve seen this conceptual drawing you can see that the overall flow of the proposed park is interrupted by the ‘second GAA pitch’ – the all weather centre of excellence as it’s now being referred to. The drawing was broken down into layers so you could see the areas that would be used for wetlands, for flood management, for activities, for cultural events and so forth. All very nice and soft-focus. One thing that caught our eye was that the only activity spaces were the two GAA pitches: Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the all weather pitch. Both to be fenced off from public access.

This angered us as we felt that every other species, plant and animal, was being included in the conceptual design but the upright, two legged species, the people of the city, were being given no space to exercise or play with their children. The project team told us that the brief they had required that they include this in the design. This was part of our problem with the whole process.
The Council have issued a brief for this work prior to the re-zoning vote and prior to any grant of planning permission that specifically includes the all-weather pitch in this location. A real case of cart before the horse.

To be fair, the project team acknowledged this point and conceded that this was something they could do nothing about. They accepted that the only people who could influence the location of the second pitch were the residents and others who could object through the planning process.
Or the GAA could seek some sort of compromise on the location of this pitch that would allow the proposed park to reach it’s full potential and to allow the GAA to still keep their centre of excellence.

We had some general discussions about the proposed bridge next to the Páirc (something that will take decades to build, if it ever gets built), the water quality in the Atlantic Pond and the phasing of the works.

We concluded by telling them that we thought the engagement was positive and that we would welcome the opportunity to consult with them as much as possible in the future. I think the description we used was that we would travel with them for a far as we could go and hopefully this would be to a point where we would get the public open spaces we were promised when the land was originally purchased and these would fit into a park designed to a very high standard.

[SaveMarinaPark]

If you have comments or proposals in relation to the park design they can be submitted up to 8 June 2012

http://savemarinapark.com/index.php/...-consultation/