Citymart Development-Very Impressive...

road_high

The developers of the mart site on Barrack st have updated their website www.citymart.ie with new plans for the site which look very impressive indeed. It looks to be one of the biggest developments ever in the South Leinster or South East region..
I wonder what they will do with the Padmore and Barnes site, wonder is it part of the redevelopment, anyone know?

MsFifers

Another shopping centre. Oh hurray.
I think its ugly, no architectural features of any interest, no greenery, not conducive to any kind of community activity for the people living in there. This development looks like everything that is going wrong in Ireland. Build lego buildings, buy crap you don't need.

But then, I hate all shopping centres.

Do you think all this development on that side of the city is going to have a detrimental effect on High St?

Plug

Im delighted kilkenny is doing something positive, will get more people inwards towards the city, a nice boom IMO. Kilkenny people have been living in the dark ages for a while now:rolleyes:

Firetrap

The only thing is, will the city's infrastructure be able to cope with all the traffic? Thing are bad enough with the McDonagh Junction building site without all the traffic going into it.

If they've got the infrastructure in place, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stick shopping centres on the edge of town. It would free up the centre of Kilkenny for people to enjoy the medieval city stuff the tourism people are always banging on about.

road_high

MsFifers wrote:

Another shopping centre. Oh hurray.
I think its ugly, no architectural features of any interest, no greenery, not conducive to any kind of community activity for the people living in there. This development looks like everything that is going wrong in Ireland. Build lego buildings, buy crap you don't need.

But then, I hate all shopping centres.

Do you think all this development on that side of the city is going to have a detrimental effect on High St?

But then the investors would bring their money (and consequently many jobs) to another town or city and KK would loose out big time. As it there is a big drain of spending out of Kilkenny to other places.

Think High St will be fine in the long run. Personally I really resent having to into town for everything. It's vested intertests imo on KK borough council that have held up developments outside of High st for ages. Seveeral of the FG councillors are prominent business owners there; need I say more??

Firetrap

mfitzy wrote:

But then the investors would bring their money (and consequently many jobs) to another town or city and KK would loose out big time. As it there is a big drain of spending out of Kilkenny to other places.

Think High St will be fine in the long run. Personally I really resent having to into town for everything. It's vested intertests imo on KK borough council that have held up developments outside of High st for ages. Seveeral of the FG councillors are prominent business owners there; need I say more??

That's it in a nutshell. Kilkenny's not a good shopping town. There isn't even a Tesco here for Chrissakes. The vested interests ended up letting in multiples like Dunnes and Lidl only because people were voting with their cars and taking their business elsewhere.

Because of the way the place is laid out, it clogs up with traffic very very easily and the backlogs can be horrendous. From a traffic point of view, people should have a choice if they don't want to have to go into the middle of town and spend 20 minutes getting from one end of John Street to the other. Anything that will relieve this is welcome.

I agree with you about High Street. I'm sure they're probably losing a certain amount of business from people who don't bother going into town to shop at peak times because of the traffic. And the shops on High Street don't do late night shopping too well as it is.

Lump

Sweet it's "Pissing" distance from my house....

road_high

allie_e17 wrote:

That's it in a nutshell. Kilkenny's not a good shopping town. There isn't even a Tesco here for Chrissakes. The vested interests ended up letting in multiples like Dunnes and Lidl only because people were voting with their cars and taking their business elsewhere.

Because of the way the place is laid out, it clogs up with traffic very very easily and the backlogs can be horrendous. From a traffic point of view, people should have a choice if they don't want to have to go into the middle of town and spend 20 minutes getting from one end of John Street to the other. Anything that will relieve this is welcome.

I agree with you about High Street. I'm sure they're probably losing a certain amount of business from people who don't bother going into town to shop at peak times because of the traffic. And the shops on High Street don't do late night shopping too well as it is.

And they wonder then why all the business has been leaking to Carlow in recent years...The Market Cross has no roof thanks to the objections of the High St traders at the time! And there wasn't really been any new retail developments in KK since then so I don't really understand people who say KK doesn't need new developments like theis one.