August 23: Landlords and customers forgotten

I must say that I find it very unedifying, this latest row between developers and the city traders, as to whether or where a new shopping centre should be developed. It reminds me of a flock of voracious seagulls screeching over an empty discarded fast food wrapper.

I am only one of the missing “footfall” in the city though as a pensioner it is more a “soft shoe shuffle” but I find it bordering on depressing to walk through the almost deserted streets of my native city.

I find it all the more disappointing when I thought that in the new unified local authority and in this our year of the “City of Culture” that we were beginning to see tiny green shoots of recovery in the economic woes of our city.

In the developing row it seems to me that there are two very important interest groups that seem to be missing from the discussion and that is the landlords and the prospective customers.

I have to wonder what has happened in the past couple of months or is likely to happen in the next couple of months that the traders and developers at one another’s throats for the pleasure of the custom of the footfalling masses.

It is interesting now to see a local politician enter the fray, suggesting that we “not repeat the mistakes of the past” and “statutory agencies” are not now competing with each other.

However this “politician” is a member of the “statutory” body that found it necessary to bring contractors from Galway to install bicycle stands in O’Connell Street and the same body that now, before the ink is dry on the 2030 plan have commenced to dismantle the same plan by removing the much vaunted “Innovation Centre” from the City Centre to the 
outskirts. This is not to suggest that these two little projects would create an economic boom, but every little helps.

From what I have seen recently with new businesses being fitted out by workers mainly from outside the country it makes me wonder where our traders depend for their custom are the businesses and workers not the backbone of their business.

When I hear of the traders saying the “parking” in Limerick is excellent value it reminds me of Marie Antoinette telling her starving subjects when they had no bread “Let them eat 
cake”.

I only wish both the traders and developers the best of luck and hope that they do not depend on those journeymen workers that built and fitted out their premisess to keep them in business. I expect that the shoppers will continue to choose where they spend their money by their “purse strings” rather than their footfalling “shoelaces”.

Dan Hegarty

Park Gardens

Corbally