New Patrick's Street

daveirl

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GoneShootin

not to worry bout the lights dave, im sure "certain folk" will make their own adjustments and additions to the structure

i like the lights, tho ive yet to see em operate in darkness.

as for the road/paving itself, well i think its a great idea. cork city roads are a disgrace tbh. tho i wonder how are they going to manage traffic thru the city ?

i can just imagine all the white vans thrown up ontop of the path

lukin

How far up the street are they going to go, does anyone know?
Is it going to go right up to Grand Parade?
It'll look fantastic if they do.

yellum

crap design, crap lights, crap all round. What a fuking disaster, it looks like Henry Street. Get some new ideas for ****s sake. Theres enough money being spent on the street and they just copy the idea from another place.

European City of Culture my ass. The lights are boring, the stone is so damned common now they might as well put down linolium. When it rains it looks terrible. It looks like the area outside the Opera house.

Get nicer stone. Get a better architect, get with the modern times. The state of new architecture in this country is criminal anyway. All derivatives of the same ****e. Fire all their asses and get some people in with class and style.

ozpass

Yeah, it does come across as being a bit bland and unoriginal.

They should have got the guys who designed/paved the area between the Corn Exchange and New Marks & Spencers in Manchester.

yellum

They should use more of the native rock of this county/country. Bus shelters, wooden seats and slightly nice lights don't make the main street of the 2005 European City of Culture quite the showpiece that it should be.

corkviewer

Whatever about the street I'm quite certain that come 2005 Cork city council will still leave the ugly wires that hold up the tatty christmas decorations for 5 weeks of the year in place all year round.

There is a slim hope that as part of their renovations of patrick street they might take down these eyesores together with the decorations in january but I have my doubts. Its the simple things that make the difference - not spending millions on stone blocks on pana.

jayl

The pavements nice, nothing all that special like! Just wait till Christmas arrives when theres thousands of chewing gum remains stuck to the ground and millions of SHARE stickers making it ugly.

As for the lights, they are questionable. The pole part is a nice idea, but the lamps aren't great.

Bus stops: Look nice, but every Saturday night they will be smashed to bits!

In general, Pana was grand as it was, and this update to it is going to go out of date in 3 or 4 years, and since its taken so long to do the feckin thing I dont know if its worth it!


If you ask me, they should have pumped more money into getting the Drainage scheme done quicker so we can all keep a coolhead! As for City of Culture....our culture seems to be work, drink, assault. What will the Europeans think when they get a savage beating on a Saturday night???

Jayl.

Raskolnikov

As cool as it looks and all you really have the question the wisdom of the corporation spending ridiculous sums of money on this while the rest of the roads and footpaths in Cork are in bits.

dmeehan

Originally posted by Raskolnikov
As cool as it looks and all you really have the question the wisdom of the corporation spending ridiculous sums of money on this while the rest of the roads and footpaths in Cork are in bits.

not only the roads and footpaths, but the quays and wharfs are a disgrace. weeds and trees are growwing out of the quay walls, manky old "unsafe" wharfs. while i dont neccessarliy want to see a "Lee Boardwalk" but some kind of spring clean would be nice. at least make them safe.

Andor

I heard the reason we qualified for the 'European Culture Capital 2005' is cause so few other places applied for it due to knowledge of its existence being obscure. I accepted that as true since i cant see any other reason why Cork would be chosen.


As for the 'new bits'?
Boring and ugly if ya ask me, and the rest of the city is so bloody dirty, did you ever just have a look at the cut of the bus or train station? The two main places people coming in to Cork for the first time are gonna see and they look like something that survived the nukes in Planet of the Apes.

As for those christmas decorations? FFS!!! tacky isn't the word, same things since the 80's , if a bulb breaks apparently they cant replace it since the original manufacturers of the lights closed down, and nobody is willing to pay for new decorations.
:rolleyes:

The whole city is a dreary depressing old hole, and at night the town is flooded with drunken wha's.


( i love cork really though;) )

suppafly

I think it looks alright. The lights r fine. Only thing is they're takening ages! Its taken them a fair long time to do just that little bit they've done so far. Again I think i will be really cool when its finished.

ozpass

The 'European City of Culture' made a big difference to Glasgow when they were awarded it- large scale investment for inner city areas et al. The English broadsheets have already latched onto it. The Observer had a large article last week on Cork property. Apparently Cork is 'rapidly becoming the place to be' and property prices 'are set to soar in the next 18 months'.

European City of Culture isn't that obscure outside of Ireland.:)

daveirl

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evie

You have to admire the effort that they put into the first quarter of the right side of Patrick St. (for those of you not in the know, that was sarcasm!)

I do like what they have done with the street, however, it's supposed to be European CITY of culture, not quarter of a street!

Correct me if, i'm wrong, I usually am, but a street does not make a city.

What else are they doing??

daveirl

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BigEejit

They have done 50 yards of one side of the street (I'll concede that it is a wide street though) .. but at the rate they are going it will still be under construction when Cork IS the city of culture ..

Up at dawn square they had a selection of the different natural stone that was to be put on the street .. with Cork ppl supposed to pick the one they wanted .. but it looks to me like they are using one that was not shown!.

and the latest bloody instalment of the drainage scheme is fcuking diabolical .. my wife is stuck for 10 - 15 minutes extra every day .. going in and out .. final stage me arse ..

Rebel18

Is it me or are the drainage contractors redigging up oliver plunkett street?

If its them the whole project is a joke.


As for patrick street only time will tell.

evie

Was walking down Winthrop St yesterday when I encountered an incredibly bad smell of, yes you guessed it, drains! Won't be long before Winthrop St will be dug up too I reckon!
Maybe we should call the lads from Jackass in, see what they think of swimming in the Lee!

mooman_00

not a fan of the lights either i think they are horrible like something someone in the eighties would have made thinkin it would still be cool in the ninties, well it isn't i think they should have come up with some new ideas aswell.

As for the bus station, did anyone else see the proposed new look for it. I think it was in the weekender last week or the examiner during the week or sth. It looks like they are knocking the whole thing down and building up a new one:( Where am i going to spend my time now, i love the bus station jacks you meet loads of cool people there.....

yellum

Yeah the Bus Station is going to look like the one in Waterford. Where are the really desperate gay guys going to cruise now if the jacks are gone or changed ?

Architecture in Cork really sucks. The new student centre in UCC looks like the Opera House (oh guess what, same architects ). The new PM building in Mahon is the same, I bet the Bus Station will be too.

Someones obviously got shares in some stone company, a glass company and some crowd that make steel/metal in shades of blue.

Hail2thechimp

How about that statue thing which they built by the bus station about a year ago?it looks like a joint effort by Stevie Wonder and Marilyn Manson

How can you tell who's sane from who's insane?

mooman_00

There is always those jacks on the walkway just outside merchants quay, but there really small, you'd only fit two people in there( more if they weren't hard at it). im actually not sure if those jacks are still there or if they were ever there, memory is not the best since nam.... Could be a idea for a new thread ??

Washout

Is the redesign of the bus station on the web anywhere? be interested to see it.

Ive only been to Cork City 2 or 3 times in the last couple of years...was born and raised there...last time was at xmas and I must say I like the idea of what they want to do with patrick street but it looked like a flippin disaster.

A great idea completely gone wrong

yellum

Originally posted by Washout

A great idea completely gone wrong

Welcome to the world of local government projects

mooman_00

Washout i
cant find it anywhere on the web spent the last half hour trying, i have a picture of it here if you meet me in the bus station jacks around 10 o clock sat nite ill give it to you

Washout

ROFL mooman_00... I woulodnt even go near those jacks...The most woeful public jacks in all of ireland

mooman_00

they're not that bad, there safe out, there is always at least two wino's sitting on the bench outside watchin over everything, making sure everything is ok. I trust them anyway, they are nice lads.

daveirl

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Molly

I can see the ugliness of patrick street but i quite like the student centre in ucc.

evie

I'd have to agree with you there Molly, partly!
I like the front glass bit of the student's centre, the back of it looks like a prison! Hopefully the new restaurant/art gallery will look a bit better. It would want to for all the building they're doing!

yellum

Most of the buildings in UCC suck to be honest. The O'Rahilly is such a bad design. A nice building was the Electromicroscopy unit/ Plant Science Building but they knocked that for the new Student Centre. All the older buildings have character such as the ones around the Quad. They've done them up to recently and they are nice, well the non lecture rooms are anyway.

The new BioTech building is nice, but again it looks like each of the other buildings the Architects have created.

DC

Gotta say that I like the architecture happening in Cork at the moment. I think you have to wait until the whole of Pana is finished and reserve your judgement. The plans look nice. The lights will look out of place till then.

The new PM building is great. I like the design and I imagine it would be a nice place to work. Lots of light. I prefer it to the NSC building opposite which has a nice design, but lacks light - more of a functional design. Those buildings definitely beat some of the boring buildings around some technology parks, e.g. airport, curraheen, etc.

Still, there are lots of pretty grotty areas that need work. Blackpool is a shambles! Isn't it supposed to be some sort of centre of commerce? All it has is some pubs, chippers, video shops and a few boarded up buildings.

evie

Yellum, not only is the O Rahilly Building a bad design but it's also very easy to get lost in! It took me ages to get my barings, all the corridors look the same.

yellum

Indeed, some very basic colour changes would make a world of difference. More signs would also be handy. The corridors and the numbering of the offices are just really stupid.

Wouldn't expect anything less from a college that built the science building the wrong way round and forgot to put toilets into the original design.

daveirl

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yellum

Not intentionally. Thats the story thats been told for years. Foundations were down and work started before they realised.

Could be urban legend but that administration would never surprise me with the depth of incompetence they can master.

Richard Barry

Originally posted by daveirl
So what does everyone think of the bits that have been done. What do you think of the new lights?

They look pretty cool, but I know some people hate them. I'd say they could start looking dated very fast!

One regrets to say “disappointing so far”.

Not much like Barcelona (designer Beth Gali’s ‘home town’) with its tree lined boulevards.

Or Montpellier, the Mediterranean city where most French people say they would like to live. Which was also designed by Catalan architects from Barcelona.

Montpellier has a similar population size to the greater Cork area. They have managed to install a tram system and remove vehicular traffic from the city centre without any inconvenience to the motorist, pedestrian or anyone else.

R.

Green Montpellier (patience required if you've not yet been able to get broadband)

the evil belly

Originally posted by daveirl

It even has that blank concrete on the inside.

ever been to ucd? some of the building have won awards for "most innovotive use of concrete" three quarters of the place was never even painted in the first place. 1960's communist russian architechture and damn depressing too. still only another year to go and then i'm free.
as for patrick street, i like it. hope the finish the huge wide footpaths all up it though, make getting around a lot easiser. no being stuck behind people walking slower than a crippled snail

parasite

Originally posted by yellum

Wouldn't expect anything less from a college that built the science building the wrong way round and forgot to put toilets into the original design.

there is a definite lack of toilets there, only in the basement ... doesn't look back to front though

pro_gnostic_8

My take on all this renovation work going on in Cork at the mo' is that it simply isn't worth all the disruption. I really do believe that.

Maybe in 2005 or whenever the place might look alright but until then and for the last couple of years the city is just one vast building site. Like downtown Sarajevo after the war. An eyesore......... and a nightmare to drive in. Every main artery is either impeded or blocked off -- South MAll, Patrick St, Washington St, Oliver Plunkett St (both ends), etc. Last week I saw an artic lorry having to park in Grand Parade and the driver pulling pallets of goods a fair hundred yards along the footpath to deliver into Patrick ST. This is just not fncking on in a modern society. Businesses are suffering a huge fall-off in customer traffic in the affected areas. I personally know of at least one business (Parnell Place end of O.P. Street) that is closing as a result of all this. I'm aware that a lot of this has to do with the Main Drainage Scheme, and I'm not a civil engineer so I'm probably naive to wonder why one street at a time cannot be worked on and finished instead of doing everything in bits at the same time. And why is it taking so long? Washington St works are going on for 2 years! An underground subway system would be finished faster.

Even to walk around the city is an unpleasant task with the noise from angle-grinders, disk cutters, dust, hoardings, broken up footpaths, etc. Naw, give me back Cork the way it was rather than this hell. Sometimes the end doesn't justify the means. Experience the pleasure of driving or walking around Galway to compare.

evie

Businesses are suffering a huge fall-off in customer traffic in the affected areas. I personally know of at least one business (Parnell Place end of O.P. Street) that is closing as a result of all this.

Only one?? I'm very surprised. I know of a business on Emmet place near the Opera House and they have seen a notable difference in trade. However, I work in Roches Stores and that seems to be always busy. This probably has something to so with the conveniently attatched car park. But there is definitely a difference in trade on the streets.

DannyD

I think it's long over due.There should be no deliveries to business during working hours.I would ban deliveries and only allow them between 11pm and 6am.There is no place in modern society for trucks double parking during working hours ,holding up the whole show.

My main worry is how long those new lights will last ?

I retract my previous statement.Apologies.

dahamsta

Originally posted by DannyD
Don't even think of saying that I'm discriminating.Count the ammount of south siders outside John Graces Chicken on a saturday night at 2am and then admit you are defeated.

Danny, not every Northsider hangs around John Grace's on Saturday night. You're stereotyping, which is discrimination by definition, and it isn't welcome on this board. Keep your bigotry to yourself or do it somewhere else please.

adam

Andor

originally posted by the evil belly
...not being stuck behind people walking slower than a crippled snail

I HATE that!!!
I have no evidence to confirm this, but i have a suspicion its the same old lady ever time!
permed hair, plastic transparent mac, that little red trolley thing.....

Originally posted by DannyD
Count the ammount of south siders outside John Graces Chicken on a saturday night at 2am and then admit you are defeated.

I suppose they'ld be the ones with the large neon letter S on their foreheads? :rolleyes:

dahamsta

Originally posted by Andor
I have no evidence to confirm this, but i have a suspicion its the same old lady ever time! permed hair, plastic transparent mac, that little red trolley thing.....

I want to be one of those old ladies when I grow up.

I suppose they'ld be the ones with the large neon letter S on their foreheads?

Heh.

adam

ShaneOC

Originally posted by dahamsta
I want to be one of those old ladies when I grow up.

You're 99% of the way there

sound_wave

you know what they should really do..resurface every single road in the county..you should see blarney after they completed(half completed) the bypass!,very nicely done, but then in other places its all broken up and when it rains my poor little car gets swallowed by these bottomless pits called potholes.
and the funny thing is...as its lashing rain,the corpo come out and fill these up again..as the cars go past and by the end we have all the tarmac over the road. anyways...back on topic..
The new pana..its ok but going so so slooooowww..an improvement on the last one!! well i think so anyway!

super_canard

Well everytime I go on patrick street... i try to avoid looking at these ugly things...
Looks kinda like a Football stadium light stuff really... (and damn I hate sport...!)
the streer (pavement etc) on the other hand looks pretty neat...

I ain't from ireland (in case still don't know), what's about northisders, southsiders, and what the Hell is that S on the front???:ninja:

myhandle

Originally posted by parasite
there is a definite lack of toilets there, only in the basement ... doesn't look back to front though

Yeah, every side looks like the back

solice

i think the actual street is good but dam it all they have to do now is knock down most of the buildings on the south end of the street and everything will be so much better