Shops/Businesses opening/closing

Has a date been announced?

Has construction started yet ?

I don't know if I could live with the traffic nightmare of going to that Lidl in Claregalway. It might suit locals who can walk to it, but trying to get to it by car during rush hour traffic would crush my soul. Dunnes in Briarhill comes to mind.

If enough people get onto their local councillor something might be done. Voices make waves.

They closed down our local post office but pressure on our local councillor got them to setup the post office again inside a local business' premises.

Apparently, Tonery's in Bohermore has closed. Not a surprise, though. They announced their intentions a long time ago. It was just held up in planning.

Many seem to be quite valid - parking, traffic congestion, there is no free parking on Sea Road - there'd be chaos. This will affect any business opening there. Also the long queues outside Dublin Bread 41 branches.. Though "we would be apprehensive of an outdoor seating area to the front of the café" 🤨

Are you saying folk paid €20 to say they are in favour of it?

Same amount of parking for the other places along that street/Williams St West. Which includes other cafes and restaurants that have thrived there for years. This obsession with needing car parking spots everywhere in the city is insane.

There's already load of similar thing on that street and adjacent streets without issues but this new one will suddenly cause people to people to behave differently? Give over.

I had a read through some of the submissions and the first thing is it's lovely to see the support of the other business owners. I know there's a certain amount of "rising tide" in it, but they do seem to be supportive group.

The objections all seem to be self entitled NIMBY-ism. Haven't seen a single one that can't be boiled down to "not in my area cause we're special". Lets not forget they're objecting to 2 new houses in the middle of a housing crisis, because it might interfere with their parking or they might have to look at scruffs queuing for bread.

Also, lol at the ones complaining it's going to be both too busy and also go out of business so not worth doing. Which is it lads? And the ones that included a load of photos of cars just parked normally with a couple of bad parking ones mixed in. Don't even know how they managed that. I'd get worse parking photos by wandering down any random weekend.

Fair play to the west end traders group for being proactive about supporting a new business that will add to the vibrancy of the area.

As for the objectors, if you're going to pay someone with planning experience to craft a response that multiple residents can cut and paste into the their objections, you're probably better off getting it written by someone who doesn't get confused between 'exacerbate' and 'exasperate' (this error appears in multiple submissions). And then to present a 'random selection of photos of parking chaos' and start off with a photo of cars parked correctly and neatly within the white lines. Clearly the mentality is 'local parking spaces for local people'. Unfortunately, if you choose to buy a house without its own off-street parking, you've got to take your chances with all the other plebs who might like to park on a city centre road with lots of other pull locations. The biggest irony is seeing some of the same names who wrote into the papers complaining about the pedestrian improvements where Sea Road meets the Crescents, and where Dominick Street Upper and Lower meet, because they believe they made life more difficult for motorists, now complaining about too many cars. Do they really not understand that making it more attractive for people to walk within the city centre and edge zones like this will mean that more people will choose to arrive at these places on foot rather than by car.