Cork Concert Venue

flo8s967qjh0nd

Howard Holdings are to build a 4,000 seater concert venue/conference centre/ event centre at its site adjacent to Pairc Ui Chaoimh in the south docks - where the Marquee was this year. The city will be paying out about 8million yoyo's to make sure it goes ahead.
And its about time too!!

rebs23

Absolutely brilliant news. The sooner the better and congrats to City Mgr who persued this and the idea of the city council having a share to ensure it went ahead.

Owen

All we need next is a proper race track, something like Mondello. It would make for great entertainment, and give boy racers/car enthusiasts/bike enthusiasts a place to get their speed kicks without doing it on the Public Road. The UK tracks are great family days out, with monster truck racing, bike races, car races, and fantastic night time entertainment.

Well done Mr. City Manager!

Heisenberg.

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Illkillya

I've been to concerts in churches and the acoustics are terrible This is fairly significant... a capacity of 4,000 isn't far off the Marquee, and I'm sure they'll be more comfortable and with more room per seat. Anyway, I'd say it will be aimed less at the likes of 50 Cent and more at major conferences and stuff.

pro_gnostic_8

Great, positive news. Can only be welcomed. I'm delighted.

Illkillya wrote:

I've been to concerts in churches and the acoustics are terrible

Killya, accoustics quality will be the main issue addressed when the Triskel conversion of the deconsecrated Christchurch on South Main Street (next to Peace Park) into a concert venue begins shortly. Capacity will be nowhere near 4,000 tho'.

So the present plan for the Howard Holdings construction has to be a great proposal. Bring it on. Badly needed in this town.

ClareBear

Brilliant! And about time. That's great news!

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

ned78 wrote:

All we need next is a proper race track, something like Mondello. It would make for great entertainment, and give boy racers/car enthusiasts/bike enthusiasts a place to get their speed kicks without doing it on the Public Road. The UK tracks are great family days out, with monster truck racing, bike races, car races, and fantastic night time entertainment.

now that is a complete waste of money.... a track for the 2% into motors.

daveirl

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The Scientist wrote:

4,000 seater, not exactly a huge concert venue though is it...

4k SEATED is pretty big, that would be a least 8k standing, pretty impressive for Cork i would say, we wouldn't need anything bigger,
isn't the point 8k, ya so 4k seated is plenty big...remember we want it to make money and stay open, and artists like to play smaller venues, packed that bigger venues empty.

just look at ould Elton John.... Wembley Stadium 95k+ the two weekends before and he said that Cork was his best gig in the last couple of years.

Blitzkrieger

\m/_(>_<)_\m/ wrote:

now that is a complete waste of money.... a track for the 2% into motors.

I bet more than 2% would like it. 2% of our current population would be more than enough to keep it going though.....

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

Blitzkrieger wrote:

I bet more than 2% would like it. 2% of our current population would be more than enough to keep it going though.....

current population of cork is 274000 and 2% of that is 5480.
they would need double that a week to keep something like that open,

Na the sums just don't add up for something like this but ya why not give it a try if one could find a investor to take a risk on it, i wouldn't be in favor of public funds being used though.

dahamsta

Sure, because no-one would travel from outside of Cork to visit it.

Public funds shouldn't be used for a motoring venue, apart from regular grant aid. They shouldn't have been used for the topic in hand either. Howard Holdings has plenty of money.

adam

parsi

Is this definite ?

Or is it like the Hotel/Conference Centre that was used to give a veneer of usefulness to the application for Mahon Point and which has never materialised ?

Blitzkrieger

\m/_(>_<)_\m/ wrote:

current population of cork is 274000 and 2% of that is 5480.

Is that what the current census data says? I'd have thought it'd be much higher. I wouldn't be just looking at the people who live in 'cork city' anyway - I'd include the commuter belt. Include the non-nationals and people traveling from outside cork and I'd say you wouldn't be long going over 20,000.

dahamsta

The current population of the city according to the number gods is 119,418. The problem is with the city bounds, which are very restrictive and not representative of the city by any stretch of the imagination. Bring the county in and you're talking about a half million people though, plus Kerry, Waterford, Tipp, etc, etc.

adam

bill_ashmount

What % will the city council own for the €8,000,000 that is been invested?

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

dahamsta wrote:

Public funds shouldn't be used for a motoring venue, apart from regular grant aid. They shouldn't have been used for the topic in hand either.
adam

i believe they should. difference is, a motor track can only be used for motoring events( unless you go down the road of open air concerts and we have plenty of venues in cork for that) whereas a conference center can be use for a host of public and civil events for rock concerts to annual kindergarten play groups, form raves to charity tea mornings,

bill_ashmount wrote:

What % will the city council own for the €8,000,000 that is been invested?

normally what does happen is the City Council retain the right to hire the venue at a set rate for the next 10/15 years...but knowing cork...i don't know.

rebs23

bill_ashmount wrote:

What % will the city council own for the €8,000,000 that is been invested?

25%. Can't understand the objections from some to this proposal. Wasn't going to be built by the private sector so the public sector take the intiative for once and they are criticised.
In any event some of those criticising the decision such as the SF Cllr Jonathon O'Brien and Mick Barry of the Socialist Party are the exact same people that constantly promote policies of more public sector ownership of companies and yet they criticise this initiative for the people of Cork to have a stake in this venue which will provide a massive increase in visitor numbers to the city, more hotel beds, better night life and all the resulting benefits.

Killarney has one, Dublin has the Point as well as Spencer Dock under construction plus a few other venues of similar capacity, Limerick are looking to intiate a feasibility study on one between Shannon and Limerick and Mr Supermac is looking to get one built in Athlone FFS. Cork needs one urgently or we'll be left behind. It's also excellent news that it is going to be operated by the same company operating the Point ensuring that acts that play the Point will probably play the Cork venue.

The main thing anyway is that Planning will be lodged by September and once it is granted by the City Council appealed to An Bord Pleannala and eventually granted permission and built(probably 2-3 years later) we may have it in place by 2010!

BTW the current Population of Cork City and County is 482,000 people as adam has already said. Saying the pop of Cork is 119,000 is like saying the pop of Dublin City is 500,000 (the pop currently resident within Dublin City Council admin area). All the Irish cities have these shams of borders that in no way reflect the actual populations. According to CASP, the joint City and Council strategy, within a 15km radius of the Kinsale Road Roudabout the pop is roughly 275,000 people a far more accurate reflection of Cork City's population. Really gets on my wick this constant inaccurate reporting of Corks population.:mad:

daveirl

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\m/_(>_<)_\m/

rebs23 wrote:

BTW the current Population of Cork City and County is 482,000 people as adam has already said. Saying the pop of Cork is 119,000 is like saying the pop of Dublin City is 500,000 (the pop currently resident within Dublin City Council admin area). All the Irish cities have these shams of borders that in no way reflect the actual populations. According to CASP, the joint City and Council strategy, within a 15km radius of the Kinsale Road Roudabout the pop is roughly 275,000 people a far more accurate reflection of Cork City's population. Really gets on my wick this constant inaccurate reporting of Corks population.:mad:

calm down...with all your red mist, you seem to have picked people up wrong and gone off on a different rant

nobody said the the population of the whole of cork city and county was 119k, what we did say is the population of the city was 119k...and unless you can prove other wise that is what it is, live wit it...
the reason that the county wasn't mentioned was cork county has one or two existing big venues.... Millstreet, two world boxing titles, eurovision, etc, etc.
and this thread was posted under Cork City...
that's why the county's population was not added to the official city population for this thread

MLM

rebs23 wrote:

25%.

BTW the current Population of Cork City and County is 482,000 people as adam has already said. Saying the pop of Cork is 119,000 is like saying the pop of Dublin City is 500,000 (the pop currently resident within Dublin City Council admin area). All the Irish cities have these shams of borders that in no way reflect the actual populations. According to CASP, the joint City and Council strategy, within a 15km radius of the Kinsale Road Roudabout the pop is roughly 275,000 people a far more accurate reflection of Cork City's population. Really gets on my wick this constant inaccurate reporting of Corks population.:mad:

Its closer to 285000. The 275,000 was an estimate made back in 2001 for the Cork Metropolitan Area (the LUTS study area). The 2001 estimate for the county was 466,000, but the 2006 census showed an increased to almost 482,000. You are correct about population misquotes in relation to the Cork area. I constantly see the figure of 119,000 compared to 1.6 million for the GDA, for example. If you were to apply the GDA (basically the Dublin Commuter belt) criteria to the Cork area, you would easily get a figure of 600,000. I think that's more than enough for a decent sized concert venue, and a motoring venue!

rebs23

\m/_(>_<)_\m/ wrote:

calm down...with all your red mist, you seem to have picked people up wrong and gone off on a different rant

nobody said the the population of the whole of cork city and county was 119k, what we did say is the population of the city was 119k...and unless you can prove other wise that is what it is, live wit it...
the reason that the county wasn't mentioned was cork county has one or two existing big venues.... Millstreet, two world boxing titles, eurovision, etc, etc.
and this thread was posted under Cork City...
that's why the county's population was not added to the official city population for this thread

I know this is way off topic (sorry admins maybe we need another thread) and I was just making a general comment on the way the population of Cork City is discussed(not about anyones comments on here). The population figure of 119k does not include most of Douglas, Rochestown, Ballincollig, Glanmire, Blarney, parts of Ballyvolane, Glounthaune, Little Island, a lot of Togher, etc, etc.
119k covers only the administrative area of Cork City Council, so it is annoying that all these suburbs are excluded. These suburbs are just as much a part of Cork City as Patrick St is. If we were discussing an issue in relation to Douglas where would we post about it? In the Cork City forum of course yet it would be probably be in the county administrative area.

By discussing the pop of Cork City and not including these areas it makes the city sound alot smaller than it actually is and gives the impression that the city is not expanding when it actually is thriving. This effects alot more including investment decisions by Gov and Private sector, etc.

"The city proper has a population of 119,143 (2006 census), however this increases to 190,384 (2006 census) if the immediate suburbs of the city in the Cork County Council area are included. [4] In the "Cork Joint Housing Strategy", it states that the 2006 population of Metropolitan Cork stands at approximately 274,000, while the Greater Cork area stands at 380,000 in 2006.[3]" above extract from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_City



I just think that Cork people should be very aware that this figure of 119k is not a realistic statement of the City's population just as the figure of 500k is not an accurate reflection of Dublin City's pop, 53K is not an accurate reflection of Limerick City's pop, and 46k is not an accurate reflection of Waterford City's pop. All these figures exclude suburbs. Galway's pop of 73k is the only city administrative figure that actually reflects the size of the city as the City Councils border was expanded to a sufficient size several years ago.

The City Boundaries should be expanded to reflect actual city sizes, thats all and when considering the population needed to support such a venue you have to take into account the 500k living in the city and county and the 1million people living in Munster, can't just confine it to the city's pop.

bill_ashmount

rebs23 wrote:

25%. Can't understand the objections from some to this proposal. Wasn't going to be built by the private sector so the public sector take the intiative for once and they are criticised.
In any event some of those criticising the decision such as the SF Cllr Jonathon O'Brien and Mick Barry of the Socialist Party are the exact same people that constantly promote policies of more public sector ownership of companies and yet they criticise this initiative for the people of Cork to have a stake in this venue which will provide a massive increase in visitor numbers to the city, more hotel beds, better night life and all the resulting benefits.

I've no problem with it as long as the council are taking a fair share for what they are investing, it is public money after all.

As for SF and the Socialist party that's another story, luckily they have very little power.

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

rebs23 wrote:

when considering the population needed to support such a venue you have to take into account the 500k living in the city and county and the 1million people living in Munster, can't just confine it to the city's pop.

the county has existing venues, it the city that has none...

its a nice tidy venue for the city we want...

rebs23

\m/_(>_<)_\m/ wrote:

the county has existing venues, it the city that has none...

its a nice tidy venue for the city we want...

What existing venues in the county are you talking about? That place in Millstreet can hardly be called a venue, more like a converted cattle barn. As for tidy venues in the city, what about the Opera House, Half Moon Club, Everyman on occasion, City Hall, etc. What the Region needs is a purpose built dedicated Events centre that is capable of holding 6,000 plus.
What point are you trying to make? :rolleyes: