Ghost estates and you (indo business section today)

Fallschirmjager

i read the business section of the sunday indo and low and behold they are saying there are business opportunities for paintball (okay we will cut them some slack for that), military etc for ghost estates....

read all about it

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ghostestate-busters-2401351.html


of course they heard it here ....first....

Stercus Accidit

It was an architect that proposed it, so you may as well have heard it from some gibbering lunatic on a street corner, aka, an architect.

Puding

great idea, been mentioned in the past as well......................chances of it happening zero

ED E

The MOD do it...

I know they havent got the poxy lawyer problems that we do but still, some site OP is bound to be nuts enough to try.

Hivemind187

close to 3000 ghost estates? Thats a huge number ... most of the must be tiny!

Airsoft Reloded

Hivemind187 wrote: »

close to 3000 ghost estates? Thats a huge number ... most of the must be tiny!

I know of one or two that are large and secluded enough to be perfect airsoft sites, we would still have the local county council issue. There is no clause in national development plan to accomodate such a thing yet.

Do you think the doj would have an issue with such a realistic setting though?

Stercus Accidit

Joking aside it could work out great, you have to remember realistic as the setting may be, we will have little pop-guns firing slow projectile 50 metres max, with lads side stepping rounds with ease.

I can't imagine it is any closer to reality than firing over hills or behind barrels, scrapped cars or trees, it shouldn't be an issue I'd imagine.

ED E

Sure in The Office you're room clearing like a SWAT team. Plinking at some chap with a 249 in the window of an empty house is hardly more realistic.


All the time these places sit empty they're losing money. How much I dont know(if anyone wants to have a good googling report what they find...) but developers would obviously love to get at least part of their maintenance costs from renting bodies.

I know in the UK, the one that airsofters rent once a month has the top floors blocked off for H&S reasons, but I doubt that'd make much difference to most.
With actual roads too you could see the safe use of transportation(from this http://www.found****.com/images/military009.jpg to this http://a.imageshack.us/img58/4595/gcartdg9.png to a Saracen). Also, FUBAR would allow for large numbers of players in a relatively small space without the OPs losing control. Continual costs would probably be higher than the usual woodland but the startup costs would be far less as all the necessary infrastructure would already be there.

Somebody, please, please, please sort this out.

Witcher

Wouldn't the land have to be rezoned from residential to commercial?

Insurance would be a nightmare too I'd imagine.

OzCam

Well, the first thing you'd have to do is find one of these estates with no-one actually living in it. That pretty much rules out most of them. Where there's a will there's a way, and they theoretically could be made safe enough (eg Sennybridge).

Could it be done? Yes. Will it? Nope, not unless the Army takes one over and hires it out at weekends.

TheDoc

OzCam wrote: »

Well, the first thing you'd have to do is find one of these estates with no-one actually living in it. That pretty much rules out most of them. Where there's a will there's a way, and they theoretically could be made safe enough (eg Sennybridge).

Could it be done? Yes. Will it? Nope, not unless the Army takes one over and hires it out at weekends.

Was it me and you that had some mad rant one day about how it wouldnt matter having people in the estate.

We could supply them with eye protection and scripts and they could be npcs and civillians

And then Evilrobotshane can jizz his pants

Then again it might have been Hivemind.....

I also maybe completely just made it up right now...

Kurbinator

Glad to know I wasn't the only person thinking of this..seriously I thought I was going over the edge.I was so tempted to whip out a few AEG's and go into one of the abandoned building sites.Didn't mainly cause I'd of been carted off and secondly I had nobody to shoot at.
If I win the euro millions I'm putting that on my list of possabilities

Stonewolf

I doubt it's going to happen.

* The estate would have to be completely empty which few of them are (One of the big problems with ghost estates is that there are people living in developments that haven't been completed, some of whom were told they were buying the last houses to sell).

* You would need to put money into it to resolve dreaded H&S issues and tackle the range issue (I like how Foxtrot 58 did that actually).

* 100 meters of it is automatically gone to put the site sufficiently far from the roadway which may make some streets tactically irrelevant (given that the goal of the game is fun this IS important).

* The estate may border other developments in which case some form of barrier that will stop BBs is required around any such sides up to the height of at least a two story house. Green netting doesn't actually stop BBs.

* Rent would be enormous.

Now, personally, I think it'd be grand to have access to such a site but practically speaking it's a nightmare. If you won the euromillions you'd be better off buying a bit of land and constructing a purpose built kill-village to a scale more in keeping with the performance of 1J airsoft guns.

Airsoft Reloded

Stonewolf wrote: »

I doubt it's going to happen.

* The estate would have to be completely empty which few of them are (One of the big problems with ghost estates is that there are people living in developments that haven't been completed, some of whom were told they were buying the last houses to sell).

There are one or two though

Stonewolf wrote: »

* You would need to put money into it to resolve dreaded H&S issues and tackle the range issue (I like how Foxtrot 58 did that actually).

You have to do that with all possible sites

Stonewolf wrote: »

* 100 meters of it is automatically gone to put the site sufficiently far from the roadway which may make some streets tactically irrelevant (given that the goal of the game is fun this IS important).

Only 100 meters at the road side, thats not that bad really. It means you can use the first one or two houses for admin.

Stonewolf wrote: »

* The estate may border other developments in which case some form of barrier that will stop BBs is required around any such sides up to the height of at least a two story house. Green netting doesn't actually stop BBs.

The green netting does stop bbs as long as its far enough away from the point of fire, so if you put the net up (a couple of layers) around 50 feet away from the game border your laughing.

Stonewolf wrote: »

* Rent would be enormous.

Thats why you would only rent it out every now and then for big events.

It is possible but the question is wether or not we could get around the development plan, thats the only real obstacle to one of us doing this.

ED E

Stonewolf wrote: »

* Rent would be enormous.

Current income: 0
Current costs: X

Cost if we used one: Still X
Income if we rented one: See where I'm going? Yeah they can try and charge a fortune but its a buyers(renters) market in this case as they've practically nobody else to rent it from them.

Also RE the article: Free runners and Skaters? Pff, they've no bodgets and its hard enough to get a skate park in your local public park never mind as part of a ghost estate:rolleyes:.

Lemming

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Current income: 0
Current costs: X

Cost if we used one: Still X
Income if we rented one: See where I'm going? Yeah they can try and charge a fortune but its a buyers(renters) market in this case as they've practically nobody else to rent it from them.

There are a lot of landlords out there (notably commercial site owners), who are perfectly "happy" to have their property sitting idle rather than "drop de rent". You also have to address the "why should I let you destroy my fine china building site?" mentality that would be thrown at whomever tries to get a site sorted.

As much as it's a great idea, our best hope would be for the army or civil defense to buy up one of these estates and that we could rent for use from time to time.

swiftblade

I could see maybe the fire brigade or army using one for training purposes (more likely fire brigade). Would they let us occasionaly use it? Proubley not

Gatling

The main problem is the army and government never rent out there propertys to joe civie ,

there is a number of these ghost estates down the countrys that are 100% empty slightly unfinished and no access to a road(middle of nowhere) ideal for airsoft ,if you go by what Nama say some will be pulled down and returned to green space,
it would be great to see at least one estate used for airsoft and proved to be a profitable sustainable business

Stonewolf

Well the defense forces already refuse to let us use thier training grounds because of the reason (you, know, the reason) so I wouldn't expect them to allow us use anything new they got hold of.

ED E

And with the defense forces short on cash as it is I doubt they'll be making any purchases.


As gatling said, they'd never let us use one if they did anyways.


I think we should all buy a lotto ticket on wednesday.....3+Mil....a small chunk of that should cover it:p

thermo

I would love to play in a housing estate site! As for using current DF training grounds, I for one do not want to spend any more time in "the glen"!!

There is a very good reason we don't use army ground that most Joe soaps can't seem to grasp.........

OzCam

I forgot to add something last night, before anyone gets carried away with this idea.

While the H&S issues are resolvable, you'll also have to put up a fence all around the estate. There are several reasons for this, but unless the estate is really in the middle of nowhere, has very limited and controllable access and is not visible from a public road, you'll have to fence it off.

So, yeah, great idea in theory. Can't see it happening.

hrta

The other thing is most of these housing site's would come under public land, if NAMA own them or have taking them over, and under the planning act, if the site is not completed it has to be put back green land as it was be for planning, and because they are still a building site, no members of the public can enter on to a building site, or as they would now become condemned building site's, so no entry to the public.
But they would make some great airsoft site's.
Paul.

TheDoc

Basically, as per usual, Ireland is a ****ing cavemans paradise and the idea, while worth having a wet one over, is never happening.

I post this after spending 80 minutes trying to book a theory test last night online, the website, took 80 minutes to load pages, ridiculous.


Stone age thinking for a stoneage country, H&S ****e alone makes any useful site or idea a non runner.

Airsoft Reloded

hrta wrote: »

The other thing is most of these housing site's would come under public land, if NAMA own them or have taking them over, and under the planning act, if the site is not completed it has to be put back green land as it was be for planning, and because they are still a building site, no members of the public can enter on to a building site, or as they would now become condemned building site's, so no entry to the public.
But they would make some great airsoft site's.
Paul.

Very good point

SNAKEDOC

what happened to the crowd on here a few months ago saying they were going to rent areas such as farmers ground or disused buildings to have big events for one of weekends. these estates would be perfect for it as the site would not get old and players would have something different to play on. just look at the old base in the uk been used. imagine that here it would be epic and great for getting more people out playing.

Airsoft Reloded

SNAKEDOC wrote: »

what happened to the crowd on here a few months ago saying they were going to rent areas such as farmers ground or disused buildings to have big events for one of weekends. these estates would be perfect for it as the site would not get old and players would have something different to play on. just look at the old base in the uk been used. imagine that here it would be epic and great for getting more people out playing.

We all know it would rock man but we have a lot of legal crap to get around in order to do it and as Lemming correctly pointed out the majority of landowners would rather the land just sit there. We've faced that attitude so much at this stage that I think its a rule to be a landlord.

Daz1214

swiftblade wrote: »

I could see maybe the fire brigade or army using one for training purposes (more likely fire brigade). Would they let us occasionaly use it? Proubley not

we have our own training facility for house/compartment fire fighting training, plus once a house is burnt its pretty much useless due to the porous construction materials and is also structurally unsound so you couldnt even go inside it

OzCam

TheDoc wrote: »

Basically, as per usual, Ireland is a ****ing cavemans paradise and the idea, while worth having a wet one over, is never happening.

Stone age thinking for a stoneage country,

Have to agree with you there. And yes, I'd leave if I could too.

Oddly enough, I have several friends in the US who'd leave there if they could too, for somewhere less reactionary & more civilised. Pity there's so few places left.

H&S ****e alone makes any useful site or idea a non runner.

Not exactly. Stupid, unimaginative and brain-dead box-ticking implementation of H&S makes ideas non-runners. The regs are fine, it's people not understanding them that's the problem. And too many lawyers, of course. Lawyers get paid to argue, not to make things better. Until that changes, nothing else in this country will.

dwelby101

Bloody hell, i started reading this post with some excitement at the possibility of an authentic urban site. Now im just depressed. At the very least the idea should be explored instead of just thinking up ideas of why it cant happen.

Hivemind187

dwelby101 wrote: »

Bloody hell, i started reading this post with some excitement at the possibility of an authentic urban site. Now im just depressed. At the very least the idea should be explored instead of just thinking up ideas of why it cant happen.

Start by getting your local authorities and TD's etc to start thinking about it. Then we can.

Otherwise, setting foot onto a ghost estate is tresspassing and doing so with an exposed airsoft device is "brandishing in public".

It sucks but what do you expect from a country more concerned with penguins than poverty?