Phoenix: A war footing?

Our city is in a fight for relevance that is not being faced up to. 

Some would say that we are in a real crisis and no crisis was ever solved without admitting that one exists. That is what people call the Chamber of Commerce view of the world, essentially always pushing a positive spin on things. 

They may be right, but...? Darren Skelton, a one-time reporter on this paper, summed up the problem by saying that in his view, the city centre had lost the local middle class and that Ballygunner and Ardkeen, Tramore and Dunmore, our reputedly better-off areas, were self-contained suburbs, independent of the city. 

In essence, other than for work, not identifying with the city centre at all. 

 Some elected councillors have publicly voiced the opinion that despite a thriving arts sector and vibrant museum quarter, our city centre is dying on its feet because of a complex combination of parking, pedestrianisation, access, inadequate retail offering and lack of footfall. 

There is an increasing crescendo of complaint from concerned and interested citizens who are deeply worried that the city centre does not offer the vitality and retail choice that people want. 

If it’s not here, the argument goes, people will and do find it elsewhere. 

The impact on the city of such opinion cannot be underestimated. 

The solution to these difficult perceptions, which are of long gestation, is admittedly complex and not easy. If it were, it would be implemented.

The response of council management, as with all public bodies, is to roll out defensive PR statements detailing projects underway or in the offing, which they believe will deal with the issue. 

After all, council officials, like us all, want to be identified with success rather than tainted with failure.

This is all very well meaning, but the great difference between a plan and a strategy is exposed. A plan, as you all know, is an organized scheme created with a clear objective in mind. A strategy functions as a flexible blueprint employed to achieve a particular goal, with the capacity for adaptation and change as needed. 

This was never more apparent than with the beautiful new pedestrian bridge across the River Suir, which is part of the organized scheme for the development of the city centre, but which cannot be opened, in the council’s view, for maybe another two years. 

Even as the city faces a real fight for national relevance and massive competition within the region from towns like Wexford, Kilkenny and Clonmel for retail footfall and recreational spending, the council persists with a time-line plan for opening the bridge that ignores the existential challenges the city faces. 

In a choice between emergency action and persistence with literally grotesque time-lines, the council denies our difficult reality and chooses Mr Plod. 

Even as the patient suffers a life-threatening condition and help is available, it will not be used. 

There is no strategic nimbleness and adaptation to current conditions. The new bridge has given us, at the very least, a local and national tourism asset, rather like the Eiffel Tower in its day or indeed the Waterford Greenway. 

It’s the first new bridge between Waterford City and the sea in 1,111 years. People will want to see it and use it and photograph it, but no! January 2026, at best, is the operative date.

Councillors, other than the usual few, have accepted this debilitating mush and relapsed into silence and inertia. 

Much good work is being done to tackle a problem, which has developed over many decades: the move on from a historic dependency on industry and port activities. However, failure to act decisively in this case, merely adds to and avoids the issue.

Everyone realises that although the new bridge is in place that detailed work needs to be done by BAM to complete its installation and to bring it into usable condition. That phase of the project will be complete in the coming months, after which time it is hoped that Harcourt Developments will move on site to deliver their portion of the infrastructure, which will connect the new bridge, over the railway, with the Dock Road in Ferrybank. 

We are expected to sit and hope for a possible year and a half that all will go well and that the hotel and apartment development will be delivered. It is hardly necessary to point out that anything and everything could go wrong with projects like this. 

At worst, Trump could, for example, instigate a world-wide economic downturn, which would upend everyone’s plans. It is to be hoped that we avoid such hazards, but many of us remember when City Square construction stopped in 1990 for a year, for a variety of reasons. 

Many of us recall the six-year construction span of UHW because of the poor condition of national finances. Anything can happen! 

Waterford city cannot afford that risk as we fight for our commercial life. We cannot take that chance.

If we were in a real shooting war, the new bridge would be open next week. A corps of engineers would erect a framework of scaffolding or a temporary Bailey Bridge to connect the new construction with its access point on Dock Road in a few days. It would be done without hesitation as the security of the city depended on it. 

This could be replaced with a properly built viaduct when Harcourt Developments are on site. 

Waterford city cannot afford to wait, nor can we afford to give ammunition to the nay-sayers and knockers wallowing in the “bridge to nowhere” taunt that the proposed inordinate delay in opening it may inevitably spawn.

It is time for Council CEO Mr Sean McKeown to make a leadership defining decision about doing what is right for Waterford city centre now. 

It is time for all our councillors to reject the retreat to inertia and complacency that the delayed opening of the bridge entails, and indeed it is time for all of us citizens who carry the best hopes for the future of this historic city in their hearts, to demand that our new pedestrian bridge will open as a matter of urgency.