Another one Down..

abouttobebanned

The Belfry is to close at the start of June.

I believe Pennys have bought it.

Will there be anything left?

decies

abouttobebanned wrote: »

The Belfry is to close at the start of June.

I believe Pennys have bought it.

Will there be anything left?

Ah the chapter house

19.5V

abouttobebanned wrote: »

The Belfry is to close at the start of June.

I believe Pennys have bought it.

Will there be anything left?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4

Its back!

jayboi

I wonder what plans pennys could have? Car park is the best i can come up with. Id imagine their new store already offers most if not all their produce they would hardly have need for a whole hotel.

I dont think something the size of a hotel should have ever of gotten planning permission in the first place but I suppose it was a sign of the times.

In some cases its a pity this didnt happen sooner i mean if it had maybe with the space pennys would had the council could have come to some agreement with them and done a better job of opening up blackfriars.

19.5V

jayboi wrote: »

I wonder what plans pennys could have? Car park is the best i can come up with. Id imagine their new store already offers most if not all their produce they would hardly have need for a whole hotel.

I dont think something the size of a hotel should have ever of gotten planning permission in the first place but I suppose it was a sign of the times.

In some cases its a pity this didnt happen sooner i mean if it had maybe with the space pennys would had the council could have come to some agreement with them and done a better job of opening up blackfriars.

Jeezes I hope that there is more imagination shown than another car-park!

A hotel is part of the life and soul of the inner part of any city, and draws people in for overnights and brings atmosphere to day and nightlife another car-park would be another disaster.......then again this is a Banama Republic

jo06555

19.5V wrote: »

Jeezes I hope that there is more imagination shown than another car-park!

A hotel is part of the life and soul of the inner part of any city, and draws people in for overnights and brings atmosphere to day and nightlife another car-park would be another disaster.......then again this is a Banama Republic

IF its another car park in city its another nail in citys coffin

merlante

abouttobebanned wrote: »

The Belfry is to close at the start of June.

I believe Pennys have bought it.

Will there be anything left?

Well Penneys presumably...

abouttobebanned

yeah. Thanks for that.

dayshah

jo06555 wrote: »

IF its another car park in city its another nail in citys coffin

Ah, I remember when all there was just car-parks.

City square was a car park, and so was the back of the cathedral/Belfry. My mother used to park there on our way to Sunday mass.

JPA

How many years has that been there?

dayshah

JPA wrote: »

How many years has that been there?

Which? Belfry or city square?

I suppose the Belfry is there since about the year 2000.

19.5V

dayshah wrote: »

Ah, I remember when all there was just car-parks.

City square was a car park, and so was the back of the cathedral/Belfry. My mother used to park there on our way to Sunday mass.

Showing your age

baronflyguy

Ah bummer, I like the Belfry
They did a great job doing it up and it fitted in well where it is located.
I would hate to see a bloody car park replace it.

merlante

Is this another one of those threads where a big deal is made about something closing down and nothing is said about things opening up? And everyone goes on about the town dying, etc., etc. Because we have had a few hotel open up over the past few years as well. e.g. Fitzwilton, Travelodge, Ramada, Arlington Lodge, and more I'm sure.

AdMMM

Arlington Lodge is closed for most of the Summer due to fire damage and the Fitzwilton is one of those zombie hotels which contributes little to the area. Ramada look to be doing good corporate trade although that sector has become difficult to operate in due to falling numbers of corporate travellers. Travel Lodge will always keep ticking over although whereas they were once out on their own in terms of prices, they're coming under a bit of pressure now as room rates plummet sector-wide.

Waterford has too many hotel rooms as it is and could probably do with losing another hotel (a couple spring to mind but at the risk of having the Woodlands Hotel look at my user profile again, I'd rather not speculate)

abouttobebanned

merlante wrote: »

Is this another one of those threads where a big deal is made about something closing down and nothing is said about things opening up? And everyone goes on about the town dying, etc., etc. Because we have had a few hotel open up over the past few years as well. e.g. Fitzwilton, Travelodge, Ramada, Arlington Lodge, and more I'm sure.

No. This is a thread about a popular bar restaurant and hotel closing down and people losing jobs. If you want to start a thread about something opening up then feel free to do so.

merlante

AdMMM wrote: »

Arlington Lodge is closed for most of the Summer due to fire damage and the Fitzwilton is one of those zombie hotels which contributes little to the area. Ramada look to be doing good corporate trade although that sector has become difficult to operate in due to falling numbers of corporate travellers. Travel Lodge will always keep ticking over although whereas they were once out on their own in terms of prices, they're coming under a bit of pressure now as room rates plummet sector-wide.

Waterford has too many hotel rooms as it is and could probably do with losing another hotel (a couple spring to mind but at the risk of having the Woodlands Hotel look at my user profile again, I'd rather not speculate)

Well we have a few people come over to a meeting in Waterford that stayed in that so-called zombie hotel, which was very convenient. I think of all the places in Ireland that built too many hotels, Waterford is hardly one of them. There might be excess beds now, but it is a recession after all.

merlante

abouttobebanned wrote: »

No. This is a thread about a popular bar restaurant and hotel closing down and people losing jobs. If you want to start a thread about something opening up then feel free to do so.

Hmm... lets look at your first post:

abouttobebanned wrote: »

The Belfry is to close at the start of June.

I believe Pennys have bought it.

Will there be anything left?

Look at the question you asked and tell me that it's clearly more about all the lovely people who will lose their jobs and not another moaning thread about "the whole town closing".

Fair enough if that's what you meant, but it's not clear from the post.

abouttobebanned

Personally I'm not sure why you're nitpicking the post, but I'll take the bait.

Firstly, with regard to the Belfry.

I used to enjoy going in their for lunch. bernie, the waitress and bar tender, was an absolute joy. Mick, another bar-man, was a gent. The food was lovely and there was always a good atmosphere inside. The hotel welcomed a lot of hens and stags at a time when the Tower Hotel decided they were too good for that kind of clientele. (They've since changed their minds about that unsurprisingly.) People left after a weekend in the Belfry, content and happy.

All those staff members will now be out of work and another nice bar/restaurant/hotel will be wiped off the map.

I could go through a list of all the bars that have closed in Waterford in the last 2 years but I don't think you need me to do that. I could also list all the shops that have come and gone - again, I don't think you'd need that either.

Let me get this straight though, what you want us to do, is close our eyes to the places that are closing, and only concentrate on the new places that are opening. Ah yes, the new places that are opening. The new Waterford Crystal. Or Waterford Crystal Lite, as it could be known. Yes, that's fantastic, will bring some summer business to that end of town and the whole area will look a lot nicer.

But what about the rest of town?

We have a bar, in harveys, that is more expensive than 90% of the bars in Dublin, yet is still packed week in and week out, but Irish people are sheep and they'll go there without even thinking at this stage. Dare I say they go there cause they see it as being up-market and they consider themselves the same? Do they look at places like Rubys, Escape and the Kazbar as being beneath them? I dunno...I'm just speculating for the sake of it.

I'm all for new things popping up in the town, God knows I'm involved in some of those new things. But we also need to stop the old things from closing...because another thing God knows is that Waterford people love reflecting on things that used to be there. "Jaysus wasn't Egans great?" "Ah remember the City arms?" Yeah, they closed due to lack of customers.

Welcome the new, try and protect the old.

merlante

abouttobebanned wrote: »

Personally I'm not sure why you're nitpicking the post, but I'll take the bait.

Firstly, with regard to the Belfry.

I used to enjoy going in their for lunch. bernie, the waitress and bar tender, was an absolute joy. Mick, another bar-man, was a gent. The food was lovely and there was always a good atmosphere inside. The hotel welcomed a lot of hens and stags at a time when the Tower Hotel decided they were too good for that kind of clientele. (They've since changed their minds about that unsurprisingly.) People left after a weekend in the Belfry, content and happy.

All those staff members will now be out of work and another nice bar/restaurant/hotel will be wiped off the map.

I could go through a list of all the bars that have closed in Waterford in the last 2 years but I don't think you need me to do that. I could also list all the shops that have come and gone - again, I don't think you'd need that either.

Let me get this straight though, what you want us to do, is close our eyes to the places that are closing, and only concentrate on the new places that are opening. Ah yes, the new places that are opening. The new Waterford Crystal. Or Waterford Crystal Lite, as it could be known. Yes, that's fantastic, will bring some summer business to that end of town and the whole area will look a lot nicer.

But what about the rest of town?

We have a bar, in harveys, that is more expensive than 90% of the bars in Dublin, yet is still packed week in and week out, but Irish people are sheep and they'll go there without even thinking at this stage. Dare I say they go there cause they see it as being up-market and they consider themselves the same? Do they look at places like Rubys, Escape and the Kazbar as being beneath them? I dunno...I'm just speculating for the sake of it.

I'm all for new things popping up in the town, God knows I'm involved in some of those new things. But we also need to stop the old things from closing...because another thing God knows is that Waterford people love reflecting on things that used to be there. "Jaysus wasn't Egans great?" "Ah remember the City arms?" Yeah, they closed due to lack of customers.

Welcome the new, try and protect the old.

My problem is that people are constantly using the argument that such and such a place is closing, therefore there are less shops in town, and if this trend continues there'll be nowhere open. You have to balance this argument with what opened up, that's all I'm saying.

For example, any thread that says there are less pubs in the city centre because Egans, The Stand and DaVincis are closed, should also account for the fact that Twister Vics, Dignity and Revolution have opened. Otherwise the argument makes absolutely no sense. (Now I know that the Tweedy bars are in a strange place at the moment, but this will hopefully be temporary.)

People are all too aware of what is closing but don't seem to be aware of what is opening up, with the end result that everyone is under the impression that there are more places closing than opening, which is not what is happening in general.

If you like the Belfry and will miss it, so be it, I have no problem with people posting about the fact they'll miss a hotel when it's closed. As to the staff, hopefully they will find a job elsewhere, perhaps in one of our ghost hotels...

ex_infantry man

they,ll probably go ahead with there plans for a bt2 to be build there????

19.5V

Part of our problem with the downfall irish towns has to do with planning and the market.

In most European cities what is there stays there, in other words if its a bread shop today the chances are that it will be a bread shop in 100 years.

Here it could be a bread shop today, but next week it will be a mobile phone shop and the week after that a head shop and then a golf shop, all out for the quick buck supported by banks, government and local authorities. All very well in (so called) times of plenty.

The town and country requires planners that will plan for the best possible future of support for its citizens, and not parish-pump-politics if such planning was to exist the quick buck would be relagated to a lesser important role for future citizens.

I was present at a marketing event recently, here I was educated to believe that we here in Ireland have 5 times the retail space than our cousins in the UK, if this is true where does this leave us?
There are hotels in ireland that find the competition from bank-owned-hotels too much and will go under. These are business that are placed at an unfair advantage because the banks own them and are not operating at a level playing field

I also understand that we have x hundreds too much hotel beds available, yet new ones that were built in areas that circle this town are allowed to prosper while others perish for reasons known and unknown.

Waterford is now a doughnut evertything around the outside and nothing in the middle!

Sully

ex_infantry man wrote: »

they,ll probably go ahead with there plans for a bt2 to be build there????

BT2? As in, Brown Thomas 2? Penneys, afaik, have nothing to do with Brown Thomas..

THall04

I sympathise with the regulars and staff of the Belfry…but to be honest I’ve more fond memories of the car park that was there before it.

In the ten years its been there, I was never in the Belfry , but I missed the old car park as a handy place to park for 5 mins if you needed to pop into Waterford Electrical of Johnny Hearn’s.

It was sad when Hearns closed , but I couldn’t escape the fact that I’d been going into Woodies for the past decade , mostly because of the handy parking outside it.

I was surprised (but delighted) that Pennys decided to invest in a new store ….But Broad St./Barronstand St. area has been dying a slow death for several years now..... and the pedestrianisation of the centre of town hasn't helped.

The road up Barronstrand St needs to be reopened.....after 6pm the centre of town is a dead black hole...tourists comming out of T&H's are scared of the place and run away.
Egans closed , because the road outside it closed.
Twenty years ago a woman could deposit her boyfriend/husband in Egans on a Saturday afternoon.........go shopping ......and meet him later for a drink after he'd been watching the football/racing....when they were ready ,they could go home in a taxi (or return later in a taxi), from the rank right outside the pub....you can't do that anymore....:mad:

JohnC.

There's a rank up the next street and now down around the corner on the Quay. Are people really that lazy that they would abandon a place because there isn't a rank right outside the door but they might have to walk a few paces instead?

Reopening the street won't change anything, just make it that little more awkward for pedestrians and create a blockage on the Quay with traffic turning there. I don't believe the street opening will magically make the place busier in the evenings either. I don't think that's why the shops close at 5:30 or 6:00. They will still close and it will still be dead, open road or not.

merlante

19.5V wrote: »

Part of our problem with the downfall irish towns has to do with planning and the market.

In most European cities what is there stays there, in other words if its a bread shop today the chances are that it will be a bread shop in 100 years.

Here it could be a bread shop today, but next week it will be a mobile phone shop and the week after that a head shop and then a golf shop, all out for the quick buck supported by banks, government and local authorities. All very well in (so called) times of plenty.

The town and country requires planners that will plan for the best possible future of support for its citizens, and not parish-pump-politics if such planning was to exist the quick buck would be relagated to a lesser important role for future citizens.

I was present at a marketing event recently, here I was educated to believe that we here in Ireland have 5 times the retail space than our cousins in the UK, if this is true where does this leave us?
There are hotels in ireland that find the competition from bank-owned-hotels too much and will go under. These are business that are placed at an unfair advantage because the banks own them and are not operating at a level playing field

I also understand that we have x hundreds too much hotel beds available, yet new ones that were built in areas that circle this town are allowed to prosper while others perish for reasons known and unknown.

Waterford is now a doughnut evertything around the outside and nothing in the middle!

I actually think that the council have been very proactive about keeping comparison shopping in the centre. They blocked M&S from the ORR. TKMaxx and Next slipped through the net, but it's mainly warehouse retail on the outskirts. The problem is that the Newgate centre never opened. That would have/will make it very clear where the shopping is.

I believe there is an issue with rent in Ireland, that it is very high, too high for a business to survive doing a middling trade. There are also other things like rates and insurance that are probably high here. It is very difficult these days for businesses to last, because all you need is a relatively short period of poor trade and you're gone. Logically, most of these rates/rents would reduce until the retail space is occupied, but that does not seem to be the way in Ireland.

It's probably also a cultural thing as well. Irish people seem less likely to open a retail business than, say, the Polish, who are probably opening more places in Waterford than the Irish. And they can't have that much money.

I don't think Ireland can be compared directly to the UK for retail space. In Ireland, a centre of 50-100,000 people is a regional centre for hundreds of thousands of people. In the UK, a centre of 50,000 people is probably only a regional centre for itself, and even then, probably has a lot of competition from the large cities.

19.5V

merlante wrote: »

I actually think that the council have been very proactive about keeping comparison shopping in the centre. They blocked M&S from the ORR. TKMaxx and Next slipped through the net, but it's mainly warehouse retail on the outskirts. The problem is that the Newgate centre never opened. That would have/will make it very clear where the shopping is.

I believe there is an issue with rent in Ireland, that it is very high, too high for a business to survive doing a middling trade. There are also other things like rates and insurance that are probably high here. It is very difficult these days for businesses to last, because all you need is a relatively short period of poor trade and you're gone. Logically, most of these rates/rents would reduce until the retail space is occupied, but that does not seem to be the way in Ireland.

It's probably also a cultural thing as well. Irish people seem less likely to open a retail business than, say, the Polish, who are probably opening more places in Waterford than the Irish. And they can't have that much money.

I don't think Ireland can be compared directly to the UK for retail space. In Ireland, a centre of 50-100,000 people is a regional centre for hundreds of thousands of people. In the UK, a centre of 50,000 people is probably only a regional centre for itself, and even then, probably has a lot of competition from the large cities.

What are your thoughts on the Ferrybank shopping Centre and the small shopping units in Abbey park both within a stones throw.

Again 5 times the retail space more than the UK per head..........I think you need to think a bit more on this one.....We irish can only shop a certain amount per week/month, 5 times the retail space is 5 times the retail space no matter where you live.

If Ferrybank is to open do you think that it will have a positive effect on Waterford city?

AdMMM

I'd imagine that figure refers to land zoned for retail as opposed to land actually utilised for retail. During the boom, planning permission was sought (and often [arguably incorrectly] granted) for land to be zoned as retail as a form of speculation and to maximise the value of the investment.

19.5V

AdMMM wrote: »

I'd imagine that figure refers to land zoned for retail as opposed to land actually utilised for retail. During the boom, planning permission was sought (and often [arguably incorrectly] granted) for land to be zoned as retail as a form of speculation and to maximise the value of the investment.

Below graph represents Shopping Centre stock only not total retail space, I dont refer outstanding plans for retail spsce I refer to current retail space perhead of capita is 5 times that of the UK



Sorry for drifting off the subject about Belfry

Bards

19.5V wrote: »

If Ferrybank is to open do you think that it will have a positive effect on Waterford city?

It will have a negative affect on Waterford City centre in that it is yet another out of town retail development that will lure even more shoppers away form the City Centre and with it any chance of the the KRM development going ahead.

ferrybank shopping centre should be knocked, it symbolises everything that is rotten with planning in this country.

it is the wrong type of developemnt built in the wrong place and done solely as a rate gathering excercise by Kilkenny Co. Co.

Do you think for one minute that Kilkenny Co. Co. would allow this development to be built on the N10 outside Kilkenny city? If they did - do you think it would have a positive or negative impact on Kilkenny city centre and it's retail offering

19.5V

Bards wrote: »

It will have a negative affect on Waterford City centre in that it is yet another out of town retail development that will lure even more shoppers away form the City Centre and with it any chance of the the KRM development going ahead.

ferrybank shopping centre should be knocked, it symbolises everything that is rotten with planning in this country.

it is the wrong type of developemnt built in the wrong place and done solely as a rate gathering excercise by Kilkenny Co. Co.

Do you think for one minute that Kilkenny Co. Co. would allow this development to be built on the N10 outside Kilkenny city? If they did - do you think it would have a positive or negative impact on Kilkenny city centre and it's retail offering

I agree, it should be knocked, BUT now that baNAMA are on the scene I have no doubt that they will open it without consideration of the consequences.

Ferrybank is the result of parish-pump-planners and parish-pump-politicians acting to the best of their abilities