Beamish

RandlePMcMurphy

Hi all,

I'm working on a pet project to try to shame Beamish & Crawford into tidying up (read renovating) their head office in Cork. The buildings are completely shambolic and falling apart - I am going to be putting photo's on a webpage (http://www.tomandpilar.net/beamish/) of the buildings so you can judge for yourselves how bad they are.

What'd be really cool is if people would link to this site using the word Beamish as the link (ie Beamish) - this way, in a short order, internet searches for Beamish will pull up this site.

Also, I put a Mailto: link on the site for the email address of the MD of Beamish - feel free to mail him with your comments about how decrepit his company's Head Office is!

Thanks,

RandlePMcMurphy.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

RandlePMcMurphy

Brilliant, thanks - the more links the better - if you get a chance, you might let me know where the links are,

Cheers,

RandlePMcMurphy

dudara

I can see your point about the state of the rear end of the Beamish buildings, but that photo was taken from Crosses Green Quay, which is harldly the busiest thoroughfare in the city.

RandlePMcMurphy

True,

Crosses Green is not a main thoroughfare, but just 'cos it's not on a busy street, does that mean that they can let it slide into the current state of dis-repair it is in without anyone complaining.

You don't really believe that it is okay to have eyesores like that in any city as long as they are not on main thoroughfares, do you?

RandlePMcMurphy

dahamsta

I'm crossing paths with myself here, however...

I take your point, but there are /far/ more important eyesores that your time would be much spent on. How about the two buildings next to the old Provincial Bank on Parnell Place? Presumably the frontages are protected because they had to be propped up when TCH was refurbishing next door, but at this stage does it really matter? They're wrecked, knock the bloody things! And of course there's that horrendous building next to the Bank of Ireland on Father Matthew Quay. Whatever about the ones on Parnell Place, that monstrosity should be levelled and a nice modern building put in it's place.

adam

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

dahamsta

Something does seem to be happening there, but it's not exactly to scale. There's one container outside the door!

adam

dudara

Dahamsta made the point that I should have made. There are far more central buildings in the city that need to be taken care of. A lot of the buildings on Pana, for instance, have nice ground floors, but when you look up a little and see the higher stories, you notice that some of them are in terrible nick.

It's a pity Beamish have let that happen though, considering the building front on South Main Street has had good care taken of it.

RandlePMcMurphy

Yep,

the building on Fr Matthew Quay is horrible but who owns it? Nobody seems to know. Beamish, as an internationally trading plc. have a responsibility to maintain their building.

I have to disagree with Dudara - the front of the Beamish building is in a mess as well. Only the central portion of the front of the building is in ok nick. The two wings at the front are in a dire state - see pics of them at Beamish!Beamish

Cheers,

RandlePMcMurphy.

dahamsta

RandlePMcMurphy wrote:

the building on Fr Matthew Quay is horrible but who owns it?

Bank of Ireland.

blobert

Crikey, that's a bad looking building!

RandlePMcMurphy

dahamsta wrote:

Bank of Ireland.

Are you sure about that? - just to be sure this is the large abandonned warehouse type building behind Bank of Ireland's 32 South Mall premises?

I ask because the ownership of this building was under much debate when it was highlighted on the realcork.com site and no-one seemed to be sure who owned it.

RandlePMcMurphy.

dahamsta

I'm not tbh. I know they owned it a few years ago because someone mentioned it to me, and that they were sitting on it for as much money as possible. But obviously they could have sold it in the meantime.

adam

RandlePMcMurphy

dahamsta wrote:

I'm not tbh. I know they owned it a few years ago because someone mentioned it to me, and that they were sitting on it for as much money as possible. But obviously they could have sold it in the meantime.

adam

If I was sure they owned it, believe me, I'd have a field day with it - I'm no great lover of banks!!! but because no-one seemed sure before and Beamish are obviously the owners of their head office...!

Thanks,

RandlePMcMurphy.

RandlePMcMurphy

blobert wrote:

Crikey, that's a bad looking building!

Does this mean I can count on you to put a link on your everything.ie site?


RandlePMcMurphy.

Raskolnikov

I wholeheartedly support this effort!

Just don't ask me to start boycotting Beamish

RandlePMcMurphy

Raskolnikov wrote:

I wholeheartedly support this effort!

Just don't ask me to start boycotting Beamish

Sure, I have been known to sup a drop myself from time to time - it is one of the reasons why the state of their buildings disappoints me so much!

Any chance then you will mention this effort in a blog somewhere or put a link to it on a website (using the word Beamish as the link)?

Ta,

RandlePMcMurphy.

RandlePMcMurphy

Just to keep you up to speed, I received a response from Beamish this afternoon.

I received this email from Eamonn O' Sullivan - the customer Services Director of Beamish today in response to the Beamish site and my email to Beamish about it. Eamonn is offering me a tour of the plant - I will be taking up this offer some time after the 12th of August and will post my impressions to this site

Here's Eamonn's email:

Dear Mr. Raftery,

Further to your note to our Managing Director, Mr. Alf Smiddy, regarding
the buildings on our site at South Main Street.

I am the person responsible for a number of upgrade projects at the Brewery
for 2004/2005, and while acknowledging your comments, I do believe that,
rather than exchanging emails or correspondence via websites, it would be
helpful if you took the time to come and see us here at the Brewery and
perhaps we could update you on our various upgrade plans for the site in
2004/2005.

I would be obliged if you could please contact me as soon as possible on my
mobile (08x xxxxxxx), I don't have a telephone number for you, so we may
agree a time and date. I am out of the country until next Monday, but
will be glad to take your call at any time.

Yours sincerely,

Eamonn O'Sullivan

Eamonn O' Sullivan,
Customer Services Director


I will be taking Eamonn up on his offer late next week - I'll report back on how we get on and what if any news comes out of this meeting.

RandlePMcMurphy.

RandlePMcMurphy

Hi guys,

just a quick update on this project - I had a meeting with the guys in Beamish on Friday and they told me "There is nothing you can do that will make us change this"!

To put this comment in context, I was invited to a meeting in Beamish where I met with 3 executives from Beamish Eamonn O'Sullivan, customer services director; Stephen Murphy financial director and Jim D'Arcy production director. They told me that the discussions were to be considered confidential as there was information they were giving me which could be considered commercially sensitive so I won't go into any of the specifics mentioned.

Basically what they said was they are aware of the state of the building but that they are under commercial pressures and that the commercial pressures force them to prioritise other projects before the restoration of their buildings.

Then they asked me, in light of this new information, would I take the site down?!!!

Of course, I said no - my logic was that if I left the site up that might put pressure on them and force the restoration up their list of priorities - taking the site down would do nothing for the buildings.

This is when they told me that there was nothing I could do which would make any difference to their priorities. Then they said they were very disappointed with my decision to leave the site up, thank you and goodbye. It was hilarious, having said I was going to leave the site up and giving my reasons, I was more or less thrown out - very politely, Stephen showed me to the door and said "Eamonn says goodbye"!

I can understand that they have competitive pressures - what business doesn't - but they seriously expected that having told me that, that I would immediately take the site down, thereby taking away any reason for them to do anything about it.

Anyway, the site is currently 21st in Google's found set in searches for the term Beamish, 7th in searches on search.msn.com and 6th in Yahoo! - thanks to everyone who has linked to the site so far. If anyone else could link to the site using the word Beamish as the link (i.e. Beamish ) I would be delighted - do it in a blog and/or a site link - either works.

Thanks,

RandlePMcMurphy.

comet

Whats your motivation, is it something personal, do you stand to gain or as you say is it just a "pet project"?
Tbh I think the front of the building looks grand, got to admit the back is pretty terrible alright though, perhaps you would volunteer to give it a lick of paint if they supply you with the materials!!!! Seems strange they haven't plastered it or painted it can't imagine it would cost that much although the river makes it awkward. The easy solution would be to hang a big Beamish banner there to cover it up.

dahamsta

comet wrote:

Tbh I think the front of the building looks grand

The middle section does, but the towery things either side look manky.

volunteer to give it a lick of paint if they supply you with the materials

He shouldn't have to. Beamish's may not be the wealthiest brewer in the country, but I can't see any brewer Beamish's size being in that much trouble. If they were willing to prove they didn't have cash available though, I'd give a half day to it.

adam

RandlePMcMurphy

comet wrote:

Whats your motivation, is it something personal, do you stand to gain or as you say is it just a "pet project"?
Tbh I think the front of the building looks grand, got to admit the back is pretty terrible alright though, perhaps you would volunteer to give it a lick of paint if they supply you with the materials!!!! Seems strange they haven't plastered it or painted it can't imagine it would cost that much although the river makes it awkward. The easy solution would be to hang a big Beamish banner there to cover it up.

Tbh comet, my motivation is purely that I hate how this building is dragging the city's image down. Also, it galls me that Beamish use selected portions of the facade of this building in their marketing material. They are a plc and should be ashamed of how they have allowed their building to deteriorate. The volunteering might be a good idea from a publicity stunt perspective I imagine but I think there would be all kinds of indemnity reasons why it wouldn't be possible.

As Dahamsta said though, it shouldn't be necessary - they are a large company - they can well afford it - they simply don't care enough about the state of the building to do anything about it.

Thanks,

RandlePMcMurphy
Beamish

comet

Fair enough, btw i don't expect people to volunteer to do it, that was a joke! I would imagine for the city of culture a directive would be going out from chamber of commerce/city council to businesses to do their best to have their premises looking the best over the year so maybe together with your nudging you might get a result. My advice would be start drinking more Beamish to boost their profits for the year then they may have some extra cash to do it up

RandlePMcMurphy

Hi all,

just a quick mail to report back on the progress of the campaign to get Beamish to do something about the appalling state of their Head Office in Cork. Doing a web search on Google now for the term Beamish and Crawford - the Beamish site comes up at no. 3! It comes up at no. 4 on Dogpile, no. 6 on Yahoo and no. 9 on search.msn.com.

This is an amazing result - thanks to everyone who has helped to make this happen - a few more links and we'll make no. 1.

I also found an interesting report on the website of Scottish & Newcastle (the owners of Beamish and Crawford plc) - it is called Full Principles and Values Report (available at http://www.scottish-newcastle.com/sn/cr/crpublications/principles/) where it says Scottish & Newcastle "are also fully aware of our responsibilities to the environment and the community". I sent them an email to corporate.responsibility@scottish-newcastle.co.uk asking them how they square this report with the pictures of the Beamish Head Office on the site.

I await their reply with interest!

Cheers,

RandlePMcMurphy.
Beamish

Danni

RandlePMcMurphy wrote:

Basically what they said was they are aware of the state of the building but that they are under commercial pressures and that the commercial pressures force them to prioritise other projects before the restoration of their buildings.

Commercial pressures my ass, that's why they can afford to sponsor a competition on RedFM to find Ireland's next comedian. I had a great idea.. RandlePMcMurphy, you should get someone you know to enter the comp, then when they're live on air one of their jokes should be about the state of Beamish's buildings!!!

dahamsta

Screw that, he should enter himself as Randle P. McMurphy!

ulick-magee

maybe these guys will fix the place up when they buy it
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36691594285

i love Beamish