The lack of construction and progress

evoke

Hey guys,
I am currently living in Belfast but I am from Galway. In the 8 years that I left galway I have not seen much change for galway. I am comparing galway to Belfast. In Belfast the place is booming with construction and It jobs coming to the city. I was interested in peoples view of why Galway is stuck in time. Maybe it is not stuck in time and I can not see what is going on underneath.


What I see in Belfast
In Belfast the place is booming with construction and IT jobs coming to the city. Last year they built 80 new buildings in the city and there is planning permission for more. They are building a lot of hotels, student accommodation, apartments and houses. There is lots of investment in Belfast at the moment. Every week they are announcing new IT companies setting up in the city. There are new pubs and restaurants popping up in new and old buildings. The number of night life choices are increasing every month.

What I see in Galway
No change in terms of the city. There are no new buildings around the city from what I can see. There is no serious construction happening like it was before the crash. There is no new venues for pubs or clubs. It seems like the same number of pubs in the city. Except for that new pub across from the roisin dubh were clan games used to be.

Four points that are causing it in my opinion.
NAMA's grip on the property market. They might be holding on to areas in the city that could be redeveloped. Their process seems slow to release property unless you are a big fund. I currently emailing nama to see the list of galway properties they have now sold. Their website search function does not differentiate between sold and not sold property so you have to check every property in the list.

No property developers left in Galway. They seem to be all in Dublin developing that place.

Lack of investment. Does not seem that people want to invest in Galway. Maybe it is PR that is needed. I keep hearing that there is no finance for property development. I can not believe that no one in world can provide finance to build places in galway. They must not know the right people.

Enterprise Ireland or the IDA seem to be fixed on that Dublin is the IT hub of Ireland.

Interested to hear people views

ben.schlomo

New Garda Station being built, the building next to the coach station is being finished as we speak, NUI has gone through numerous projects in the last 8 years, Eyre Square centre redevelopment continuing currently. Just the few things that spring to mind.

D Trent

Two big projects completed in UHG last year, one of them a multi storey car park.

buzz11

I agree with some points raised by the OP and its good to see a comparison to somewhere else.

In my view, the city is greatly held up by our low-standard of local politicians, their infighting, over inflated egos are stopping the creation of a cohesive vision which drives forward a city.

There was an great article in the G Advertiser a few weeks back about how bad the city council meetings are and that ordinary people would be shocked at the carry-on, but because ordinary people don't attend the meetings, they naively thing real business is being done.

Mrs OBumble

In the last 8 years ....

New companies: Electronic Arts, Games, Romero Games, Zenimax - who've gone again, Aspect, Synchronoss, Phenox (not sure if they've really opened yet), Zimmer and I'm pretty sure some other medical device ones that I don't know the names of.

New buildings: Merit Medical doubled in size, Medtronic had a big extension, Galway Clinic had a pretty major extension, Bon Secors also had a major renovation (I didn't see it from the inside, don't know if increased capacity or just made it better). Several buildings at the UHG campus. Garda HQ under construction. New gym / sports centre in NUIG. Hewlett Packard.

New schools: primary and secondary in Doughiska, secondary in Claregalway, several primary schools in Knocknacarra.

New pubs: (ie in places that weren't previously a pub) Tribeton, John Keoghs, E Brun (mmm, may have been a pub before ...). Major pub refurbs in An Pucan, The Old Forge (now a wine bar), Foxes, Dock 1,

New supermarkets: Lidl in Doughiska, Lidl and Aldi and Tesco in Oranmore, Aldi in Knocknacarra.

New transport connections .. express bus services to Dublin have opened up day trips to the big-schmoke. Made living here a lot more attractive IMHO.

In terms of comparisons, Galway is a city of 70-80 thousand. Belfast is a city of how many????

I think Galway was somewhat ahead of the national construction boom in the centre of town.
There was a forest of Tower cranes over the city from the mid nineties on.

Building when you arrived was happening in the suburbs or in smaller redevelopments.

The boom ended not long after you arrived.

stampydmonkey

There are a number of large housing developments in the pipeline too...2 in oranmore and 1 very large one in knocknacarra.

Would love to see some new 2-3bed apartment blocks too

snubbleste

How can you compare Galway to Belfast?
Belfast has 350k population and is a major centre of business for a constituent part of the UK, which has its own devolved government that can make decisions that Galway cannot. It has almost unlimited investment from London coffers along with policies that encourage construction (social housing)

beardybrewer

I think snubs is on to something there about this lopsided comparison. I think if you levelled the playing field OP may still have a point but it's not so grim. While I wouldn't say Galway is stagnant it's not in a prosperous era at the moment. Bad planning screwed us over as much as the economy. There's no sense building what we don't need. We're maintaining and getting on with it. There's plenty of turn-over in shops and restaurants. It's been a long time since we all hunkered down and didn't go out.

serfboard

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Nuigalway seen insane amount of construction in last 8years and still building

Thanks to Chuck Feeney - and NUIG wasn't the only institution to benefit from his funding.

evoke

buzz11 wrote: »

In my view, the city is greatly held up by our low-standard of local politicians, their infighting, over inflated egos are stopping the creation of a cohesive vision which drives forward a city.

There was an great article in the G Advertiser a few weeks back about how bad the city council meetings are and that ordinary people would be shocked at the carry-on, but because ordinary people don't attend the meetings, they naively thing real business is being done.

I did not know you could attend those meetings. You can get the minutes of the meetings aswell.
http://www.galwaycity.ie/council-meetings-detail-information/

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

In terms of comparisons, Galway is a city of 70-80 thousand. Belfast is a city of how many??

350,000 people so 7 times as big. That is a lot of places that have started up.

From the construction side it sounds like it is mostly public constructions projects in galway except for the housing development in knockacarra.
They do have an assembly in belfast so it allows them to create policies closer to home.


I was reading the galway development plan 2017 -2023. They predict that galway city will increase to a population of 100,000 people by 2022.

I think one thing belfast has aswell is a common vision. Everyone wants to build a better belfast. It is being sold to the world as a place to do business. Also they have big building contractors working up here on projects.

I see from this article that nama still has alot of property in galway
http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/nama-holdings-in-cork-limerick-and-galway-revealed-333309.html

evoke

I would like to see galway prosper. Maybe the culture city in 2020 will help drive the city to improve.
When i come in to galway i see the great southern hotel and the abandoned apartments on the dublin road above centra. There are plenty of building in the city that could be knocked down to build bigger buildings. Like old small 2 storey houses.
I seen that there is certain areas in galway now that are designated "Special Regeneration Area". They are places that can not be knocked down i think. One place is woodquay.

evoke

This would be a great development for galway

http://connachttribune.ie/developers-plan-to-demolish-church-in-eyre-square-revamp-113/

BeardySi

evoke wrote: »

This would be a great development for galway

http://connachttribune.ie/developers-plan-to-demolish-church-in-eyre-square-revamp-113/

I think the owners might have a slight problem with that...

"However, the Diocese of Galway has issued a statement to say that no approach whatsoever has been made by the developers and the Diocese has no plans to “sell, deconsecrate, demolish or move St. Patrick’s Church, the ‘old St. Patrick’s’ Church, the associated parish houses or the adjacent graves”.

TerrorFirmer

Yeah, that's part of the effort to make a reverse Latin Quarter, a hub of bars and restaurants on the opposite end of town. Still in the very early stages, and literally millions upon millions was lost in the initial investment in those properties.

As for the Great Southern, the Comer's own that, and they've no intention of selling unless the price is what they want for it. GMIT have tried to purchase the land to no avail, because they want far above market value for it. Shame, given it's literally the gateway to the city.

The units above Centra on the Dublin Road look dreadful agreed, total shame.

J.pilkington

Here is an example of why, take note of the current progress of the sister danish plant announced at the same time

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/apple-seeks-to-fast-track-challenge-to-850m-galway-data-centre-1.2849858

Wouldn't surprise me if one of the objectors is one of the serial moaners from the Galway city forum(Christmas market, eyre square, grass, roads, cars, council, buses, shops you name it and it's been done incorrectly according to the armchair experts)

TerrorFirmer

One of the objectors is a guy who owns data centers in the east of the country!

intellectual dosser

I'll be that guy who raises (again) the traffic problems. It must be very hard to get planning permission for something that would put further strain on already clogged arteries. Even if some of the plans got approval there might be some movement in property development.
The view from my armchair.

evoke

CSO census records for 2011 indicate that 90% of those commuting
into the city for work travel by car. Within the city, travel patterns also
indicate a heavy dependency on car usage in particular for journeys
to work and school trips. The high levels of commuter and local car
usage gives rise to significant congestion on the road network which
seriously impacts on the economy and the experience of the urban
environment.

This paragraph was in the galway development plan 2017 to 2023. Maybe the smart traffic lights they upgraded to might solve the problem.
Belfast is the third congested city in the UK. They are also looking at how to improve traffic.
Nama wrote back to me.
Nama can not publish nama secured properties which are currently owned and managed by the existing owner, they only publish properties where a receiver has be appointed to them. This is because the rules for publishing a receiver are different to publishing an owner. The owner have a right to privacy.
The properties that are listed on the nama website are properties that have had a receiver appointed to them.
They really did bail out the property developer. The developer could own property that some else could buy and either renovate or build upon. Since they are under no pressure to sell they can wait for the prices to go up since they probably get a very good interest rate. In a normal market the bank would put them under pressure to sell and the developer would take a hit.
Sounds like the developer can get rid of the non performing assets and keep the performing assets. They really did bail out these people.

flazio

Before we erect new green fields developments let's sort out two of Galways biggest eyesores. Former Corrib Hotel and Crown Square.

TerrorFirmer

Not holding out any hope on the Corrib given who owns it. There was some progress made on Crown Square, the City Council voted to remove existing restrictions on residential building there a while back.

serfboard

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

As for the Great Southern, the Comer's own that, and they've no intention of selling unless the price is what they want for it. GMIT have tried to purchase the land to no avail, because they want far above market value for it. Shame, given it's literally the gateway to the city.

In a properly-functioning society, any vacant site within a metropolitan area should be CPOed, particulalry when it can be used to provide vital (educational) infrastructure.

And don't give me any "you can't CPO private property" nonsense. We do it all the time - for building roads.

Brendan Flowers

Are the plans for the Crown Square development available anywhere? Had a quick look online but couldnt find anything except a few exterior drawing.