THE Lord Mayor of Cork has criticised the lack of progress on the Cork events centre and suggested that the wrong option was chosen for the venue.
Lord Mayor Des Cahill hit out at the slow pace of progress on the development after Minister Simon Coveney revealed in yesterday’s Evening Echo that the project may need additional public funding. It is believed that an extra €10.5m may be needed to complete the venue at the former Beamish & Crawford site on South Main Street.
The Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr Des Cahill.
Mr Cahill has now said the alternative site at Albert Quay, which had been proposed by O’Callaghan Properties as part of the tendering process, should have been chosen by City Hall.
“The delays are appalling. It took a long process for us to decide who was going to get this,” said Councillor Cahill.
“We can all admit that if the other person (O’Callaghan Properties) got it then we’d be having an event there right now. Along with every other member of council, I am not happy with the delay There is an understanding that they are short of money. I believe they are about €10.5m short of what the original price was,” said the Lord Mayor.
The Lord Mayor added: “I don’t know if they’ve formally asked the State for more money, but they certainly haven’t asked the city council.”
Cllr Cahill said his understanding of the situation is that the event centre is now due to be bigger than originally thought, meaning it will cost more than the original figure of €53m.
Some €20m of this is already coming from public monies. The Government pledged this funding to the development almost exactly two years ago. But, apart from some demolition and archaeological work, there has been few signs of progress at the site so far.
Conor Healy, chief executive of Cork Chamber, said he understands people are frustrated, but said it’s important that the development is done right.
“It is a complex process. Reasons for some of the delays were outlined by the developers in the last number of weeks in terms of re-evaluating the design to ensure it met all the requirements and was fully multi-purpose,” he said.
“As a result, I believe we will end up with a product which will actually bring even more value to Cork. While we would have preferred if things had moved quicker, it’s likely that the result will have been worth the time taken to ensure specifications were the best they could possibly be. Significant funding has been provided to date — €12m from the exchequer and €8m from the city council.” — so it is crucial that whatever it takes at this point for the project to move forward needs to be done,” he added.
While BAM has yet to comment publicly on the issue, a spokesperson said they would get back to the Evening Echo about the situation shortly.
The post Lord Mayor: Wrong option picked for Events Centre appeared first on Evening Echo.