Phoenix: Somebody will fix it!

Heather Cox Richardson, esteemed US academic (MIT) and historian, uses that expression to explain how empires decline when faced with challenges to leadership or hegemony and fail to tackle them. 

It’s something like “what’s everyone’s job is no one’s job”. Somebody (else) will do it! 

Has that attitude afflicted Waterford city centre in recent years?

Complaints about Waterford city centre generally range across well-known topics. Not enough parking or too expensive. Rent and rates too high, four-lane quay, very difficult access to city centre, too many vape, nail bar and barber shops, not enough clothes shops for women, not enough big name retailers, too much pedestrianisation, better shopping elsewhere, lack of atmosphere and ambience. 

The complainants can be read across social media platforms. Everything is wrong! Nothing there anyway, boy! 

The slightest rumour or suggestion that any business is changing, closing or doing anything is met with a dawn chorus of intense negativity. Council, chamber of commerce and retailers must be aware of it. What, if anything, is being done to actually check the variables listed although things like footfall and retail vacancy seem to be measured? 

Are those who complain right and if so why? 

Is anyone lobbying national retailers to set up here, for example? Is our disposable income very low, as the South East Economic Monitor (SEEM) reports? There is a destructive narrative around these topics, which is extremely unhelpful to our city centre, but there is also a silent consensus that something is very wrong. Somebody will fix it. Who?

Athlone is a town, spread like Waterford city, across two counties, Roscommon and Westmeath. Its population between both counties is 21,349. That’s about one-third the size of Waterford city. 

It is surrounded by a network of strong towns like Tullamore, Birr, Longford, Ballinasloe, Roscommon etc. It has all the retail and more that Waterford city has long sought. 

An Irish Times property pages item caught the eye recently. Boots will open a 3500sqft shop in Athlone Town centre shopping centre. They join Golden Discs, Australian jewellery brand Lovisa, Marks and Spencer, Zara, H&M, River Island, Sports Direct, Next, etc. The centre is 180,000sqft with 1,100 underground car spaces. It’s about three times the size of City Square, Waterford. 

When someone says that there is something drastically lacking, for whatever reason, with Waterford city centre’s retail offering, this comparison is exactly what they mean. How is this possible? 

Athlone Centre is owned by US company Davidson Kempner, who also own McDonagh Centre, Kilkenny. Parking in the Athlone town shopping centre costs €1.70 per hour and €4 per day long-term. There are also several other major car parking facilities in the town. 

Athlone does not have a major hospital, but has a branch of TU Shannon, a military barracks, the HQ of the IDA development section (with obvious local commercial benefit) and more, prestigious FDI industries than Waterford City, plus a large section of the Dept. of Education. 

It has several large international hotels, including Radisson Blue, Sheraton and the Hodson Bay. 

What they are doing, even at a glance, seems so far ahead of Waterford city centre as to be painful. Unless that challenge is quickly resolved locally, our city centre faces a difficult future. Somebody will fix it! Who?

Who will fix the dereliction owned by the council at Parade Quay? 10 years of destruction of a lovely terrace of shops has destroyed the area. Who will fix Lady Lane where a beautiful house opposite the Friary crumbles before our eyes for want of maintenance? Who will fix Michael Street, New Street, Stephen Street, Browne’s Lane, Newgate Street and the awful dereliction across that area? 

Who will fix Jenkins Lane or Exchange Street, where surface car parking has festered for a generation? Who will fix the Car Stand, where a local company has bought up property left, right and centre and failed to put a decent brick upon a brick for a decade? 

Who will fix the Railway Square centre, which is so grimy and shabby looking that it appears as if it has emerged from the primeval slime? 

Are we a serious city? Are our council, retailers and chamber serious? Our politicians, such as they are, have overseen decades of underfunding of UHW and SETU. Party loyalists afraid to rattle the cage even while our city is at risk from biased FDI allocation. 

Orders from Micheál, Mary Lou or Simon are followed to the letter. No deadlines, no action, no responsibilities. It’s enough to make you ill, if you cared enough about it. Just ask the 250 people who may lose their jobs in ABP.

City Square car park last week had its lower level partly railed off. Parking is outrageously priced by a Dublin-based company without loyalty or understanding of anything but their own cash flow. 

New Street multi-storey is closed and council offers pathetic reasons why it could not reopen. Is the whole city owned or operated by nonresident companies and individuals with no loyalty to the place, seeing it only through the back windows of their cars as they depart at 5.00pm? 

You can easily identify those who are continuously working to keep the ship afloat. Granville Hotel, The Book Centre, Tommy Hilfiger, Kelly’s, Shaw’s, TRM Menswear etc., you know the list.

Work on our airport extension will start next month, without thanks to Ministers Butler or Cummins, or their political masters. 

We have tied ourselves to an uncertain North Quays future. It may work for apartments, hotel and conference centre, but construction start has been pushed to Q4, 2026, and more likely Q1 of 2027. Completion of anything on that site will be 2009 at the earliest or 2010, while the Clock Tower Bridge, our Pont D’Avignon, may still not be open for traffic of any kind. 

What damage will be done in the interim to this city by shabby national political process, glacial council action, smug property owners, moribund chamber of commerce, an absurd acceptance of delay and silent government politicians? The latter who have accepted the FDI bias against Waterford, the 20 years' educational evisceration of WIT and the failure to properly resource UHW?

Someone will fix it! Who?