Vega City plans shelved!!!

eirebhoy

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2003/11/24/story122810.html

I am so dissapointed with this news. I was really looking forward to something big happening to our country and the bloody Fingal County council rejected the plans. :mad:

woosaysdan

yeah shame really it would of probably of costed too much anyway!!!

rymus

poor old short-sighted Ireland. "No, please.. we dont want your 40,000 jobs. Give them to those hard off people over in Europe or the US." Even though it was to be built in Dublin and so would have commanded very little respect from me, it's still a bloody shame of the highest degree. All those jobs!

LoneGunM@n

What I can't understand is that they vetoed the idea, without a feasibility study being prepared.

They have basically cost the Irish Exchequer hundreds of millions of euros ... directly through taxes and indirectly through savings on infrastructural works ... The group also offered to fund the building of a 22km twin track monorail link from Dublin to the site in Fingal, to widen the motorway leading to and from the park, and to build a power station to supply its electricity.

Mary Harney must be ready to strangle Mr Soffe for single handedly costing the country c. 65k jobs!!

However, we don't know all the details on whether or not it would be a viable project ... I guess now we never will :rolleyes:

amp

Don't forget Vega would have been as big as Dublin Airport or twice as big as Phoenix Park. That's a lot of land, most of it is rolling farmland and small villages which would have to be destroyed. Sure they'd build motorways and monorails and stuff but they would basically be dictating Leinsters entire future infrastructure. As for the jobs, well the economy could be better but we've still got very low unemployment. 166,552 on the live register according to this. The lowest it got during the boom was about 140k, which imo would mean we'd have to get a lot more workers in from outside Ireland. Those people would need housing etc which would put further pressure on the infrastructure.

And what if the whole thing went titsup.com? What if it got half built and the company went bankrupt?

Now, I'm all in favour of progress and by god do I love rollercoasters but I think the whole thing is far too big for this small country.

Smurfette

Seemingly the plans that were put to Fingal County Council could have been done better by an eleven year old not something that would encourage you to invest that amount of money and the future of Fingal with . The idea is great and everyone wants to see new jobs and a bit of excitement in the country but if Disney Land Paris is struggling and that would be alot more accessable to other eurpoean countries with trains or driving an option I personally don't think that Vega City would have had a hope in hell of attracting the numbers they were projecting .

eirebhoy

Originally posted by Smurfette
Seemingly the plans that were put to Fingal County Council could have been done better by an eleven year old not something that would encourage you to invest that amount of money and the future of Fingal with .

Yes but as O'Callaghan said:

“The council possibly expected us to be making a presentation to them that would be associated with a full-scale planning application,” he said.

“This was a pre-planning meeting really, not even an application, because of the size of the project and because of the problems that it entails.

The council obviously knew they wanted to turn it down right from the start. I really hope it doesn't go to England now as they have so many theme parks now and we are stuck with bloody none. :mad:

ixoy

I thought the plans sounded like a joke.

Firstly, tourists are reluctant to come to Ireland because of the high prices. Given that, how would they keep Vega City's prices down? The wages would be too high and that would push up ancillary costs. Yes, they'd have hotels onsite but they probably wouldn't be cheap (whatever their projected plans say).

Secondly, theme parks need some decent environmental conditions. Now Dublin's infrastructure is a pile of crap. The roads are jammed already and the addition of a couple of motorway lanes is hardly a feasible approach to tackling the massive influx the theme park would create - never mind the strain on developing it in the first place. The monorail would, assumedly, take a lot of time to develop and could easily fall by the wayside if it was shown to be unfeasible. Then there's the burden on water supplies, sewage, etc. on an already taxed system when you have to take into account the park and the resultant accomodation needs for staff and visitors.

Thirdly. even if it could supress prices, people expect decent weather of a theme park. There's a reason that Disney is located in Florida and California - the sun is shining. Ireland's wet climate isn't suited to it - it's one of the reasons Disneyland Paris isn't always a success, and their climate far surprasses ours.

Fourthly, there's accessibility to consider. We're an island. Theme parks are something you - very often - drive to to have a day out. By making people have to specifically fly to it, they're ruling out a sizeable chunk of daily visitors. The population of Ireland is not sufficient itself to support the numbers required for such an insane venture.

Fifthly, how much can we trust these people? They didn't fund the required planning study. They refused to disclose their financial investors, making us unable to substantiate their claim. Finally, when making their sales pitch their PowerPoint presentation failed to work. That has a whiff of cowboys to me.

Based on the arguments that I've outlined, I can understand why Fingal Co. Council reluctantly rejected their proposal.

Dustaz

The whole thing seemed like an excuse to get land rezoned and build housing to be honest. Every newspaper report i read said that the plans were terribly vague and the quotes from the developers hardly inspired confidence.

I love this one:

The developers estimated that 35 million people would visit the 2,500-acre park annually with 18 million coming from overseas.

lol? The entire population of Ireland would visit the place 5 1/2 times a year?


So instead of "poor old short-sighted Ireland." as the Culchie begrudger said, its more a case of "For gods sake, if your going to try to con us, at least make it somewhat realistic."

Tyrrial

Must say that i wouldn't want some badly designed park stuck in the middle if dublin. if they can't get planning for it they should go through the propper channels and bribe someone in power with a few Euro

moridin

Exactly... the whole project sounds both totally far fetched and silly in the extreme.

The numbers being quoted just don't add up... 37 million visitors a year, hah, sure... eurodisney gets what, 12 million or so, and the population of France is a hell of a lot higher than Ireland.

As Dustaz says, the scheme smacks of an attempt to get land rezoned... suddenly Vega city plans collapse and a lot of houses get built, funny that.

Kali

wow I can't believe people have actually voted yes for this poll.. the whole thing was a complete sham.. the consortium said they had several big name backers in hollywood and listed off several companies, several of whom denied ever having dealings with this or expressed any desire to open a large-scale theme park in ireland (i mean just listen to those words.. IN IRELAND... obviously these people have never seen our weather, its not exactly Florida now is it?)... they'd be lucky if they could even finance half of their initial capital requirements.

hedgetrimmer

I don't think the infrastructure [sic] in Dublin could handle the extra traffic, domestic and foreign tourists and additional off-spill into the city, to be honest. Lovely idea, but Dublin is way too compacted and incomplete

Smurfette

wow I can't believe people have actually voted yes for this poll

I think the people who are voting yes in this poll are seeing there weekends going round and round on a funderland style rollercoaster.
How anyone thinks this would work is beyond me . Think what it was like when Gateway closed, a huge number of people in fingal worked there and they lost their jobs .That would be like your local sweet shop closing in comparison it what would happen if Vega City went belly up !
For once thumbs up to FCC

nellieswellies

I don't think the infrastructure [sic] in Dublin could handle the extra traffic, domestic and foreign tourists and additional off-spill into the city, to be honest. Lovely idea, but Dublin is way too compacted and incomplete

Too right, It cant handle people getting to and from work as things are.

Typedef

Yeah hello.

It's obviously a planning scam.

Do you locate the 'largest' theme park in rainy old Dublin (with a maximum potential national patrionage of 4 million people) or do you locate said theme park in say Sunny old Texas/Florida, with a potential national patrionage of 300 million people?


Taking the rezoning scam as a given.
Dublin City covers an area roughly the size of Los Angeles, but accomodates about 1/5 the population, ergo outward growth of the City is a completely ludicrous thing to do, upwards growth ( destroying the *ahem* character of the dirty old town ) is the only logical solution.

Essentially Dublin City Starts in Donabate and extends out to GreyStones, swings down past Tallaght, out to Maynooth and up again towards Mulhuddard, this is a vast area for the city to cover and zoning more land for yet more mom&pop semi-detached houses in North Dublin, is not going to do the City any favours.

In comparison to LA Dublin is a City that has grown over the last 1000 years (with dendritic Inner City infrastructure to match), you can't honestly expect the clogged inner City to cope with yet more cars, travelling from ever increasingly distant suburbs, that's total madness.

Really the only intelligent alternative is to start constructing (unsightly) large apartment blocs and mixed utility Working bloc-Come-Housing bloc developments, as hopefully will be happening in British doc (maybe it's name is British quay). In any case, transport for distant suburbs like Swords, Mulhudard, Greystones and out past Maynooth, hinge on car ownership, which is bad, since constructing roads to accomodate these cars, encourages more car ownership, and encourages further outward (as opposed to upward) growth of the city.

Vega, was about the worst thing the Council could have agreed to. Really, the Doclands must be developed upwards, in fact the preference for any future development 'has' to be apartments, otherwise the City well forever be laden with expensive transport management projects like the M50, the Luas and the Dublin Port tunnel.

Doc

The point people seem to be missing is that this is a very early stage for the County council to totaly reject the idea as they cant have had the time to find out everything about Vega. Its clear to me that the size of the idea scared them into making a snap decision.
This is not a good thing as what if it could have been made work?
It at least deserved to be given more consideration and time.

flogen

ok, at first i liked the idea, a cool world class theme park right here in Dublin, then i thought about it

sure there will me more jobs and the possibility of loads of money, BUT:
huge amounts of land would be destroyed
the surrounding area could suffer heavily as cheap and plentiful hotels and motels spring up to accomidate visitors
who the hell would pick pissy dublin over florida or paris? besides dublinners
the funding wasnt clear enough, what if they got started and then admitted they didnt have enough, thus forcing the government to either pay for the rest or pay for the destruction of what was done, or even just leave half a park in the middle of the county.
the litter problem would be huge as well, the irish are crap at waste managment anyway, the last thing we want is a hub of rubbish and crud to have to deal with too.

we dont need a huge theme park, theyre put in other countries for us to visit on holidays, i cant really see any (besides jobs) good reason to build this

Flogen

Smurfette

Maybe if Vega hadn't gone about offering the fair people of Fingal ridiculous amounts of money before the plan had even been thought out FCC may have given it more consideration .But seriously think about it,your off on your family holiday with mammy daddy Maura agus Shaun would you go to Disney Land in Florida for your two weeks hard earned holiday or would you go to Lusk . And I think the rest of europe would think likewise

whosurpaddy

Originally posted by Smurfette
would you go to Disney Land in Florida for your two weeks hard earned holiday or would you go to Lusk .

wait a minute.............lusk +vega city = lusk vegas

Smurfette

1-0 to whosyourpaddy

quank

*sigh*
i hate eircom........ oh, and our government.... :rolleyes:

Victor

Originally posted by whosurpaddy
wait a minute.............lusk +vega city = lusk vegas

You mean Lusk Vague-us

giftgrub

i think it was all a sham

they were predicting attendence figures of 37 MILLION people a year, thats just over 100,000 a day.

these are estimates of disney worlds gate figures from last year

Magic Kingdom - 14 million

Epcot - 8.3 million

SeaWorld Florida - 5 million

disney, the biggest name in theme parks doesnt even have 37 million people going to its biggest attarctions

then theres the transport issue, 100,000 people a day heading to the northside , hello traffic nightmare anyone? hell only about 4 million peopel fly the london to dublin route every year and thats one of the busiest routes in the world!

and then theres this article from the sunday times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-904899,00.html

sorry if i sound a tad skeptical

anthonymcg

Originally posted by whosurpaddy
wait a minute.............lusk +vega city = lusk vegas

My god. That's just cheese.

rymus

Originally posted by Dustaz
So instead of "poor old short-sighted Ireland." as the Culchie begrudger said

Get stuffed ya jackeen swine

Dustaz

Would you like to explain exactly how this is an example of 'Typical irish short sightedness' to a simple jackeen please?

Dustaz

Originally posted by Typedef
Really the only intelligent alternative is to start constructing (unsightly) large apartment blocs and mixed utility Working bloc-Come-Housing bloc developments, as hopefully will be happening in British doc (maybe it's name is British quay). In any case, transport for distant suburbs like Swords, Mulhudard, Greystones and out past Maynooth, hinge on car ownership, which is bad, since constructing roads to accomodate these cars, encourages more car ownership, and encourages further outward (as opposed to upward) growth of the city.
Vega, was about the worst thing the Council could have agreed to. Really, the Doclands must be developed upwards

Er, Is this some sort of Right-on leftie cool thing or is your K key broken?