Pictures Courtesy of
Tony Healy Photraphy
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Presentation Tues 27-7-10 by Alison Harvey Planning-Development Officer Heritage Council to Balbriggan Community.
There was standing room only in the Hamilton Hall Balbriggan on Tues 27 last, when The Heritage Council made a vital Balbriggan community presentation. The Presentation was on the re-vitalisation of Balbriggan Town-Centre - or Balbriggan Oldtown as it has been called - which re-vitalisation will exploit the unique character, history and heritage of the town.
The announced objective is to improve the environment of the town centre for the benefit of town centre traders, residents and visitors alike and for the benefit of the wider residential and business community of Balbriggan generally.
The Tues 27 event was sponsored by a novel partnership of Balbriggan Town Council, Fingal County Council, and Balbriggan Chamber. The principle function of this partnership is to choose Public Realm Plan consultants from a Public Tendering competition which is already underway. It is expected that the chosen consultants will be announced in Sept and start work in October 2010. These consultants will manage a major consultation and participation process with Town-Centre residents and traders and with representative groups of the wider community generally. They will bring Heritage, Town Planning and Consultation skills among other resources to the process.
The Heritage Council, an Island-wide body, has chosen Balbriggan, among only a handful of Irish towns, for the town's heritage-rich, if in some respects condition-poor, natural resources. The Council is already supporting Public Realm Plans nationwide in historic towns such as Derry, Wicklow-town, Fethard, Birr and more. A significant Heritage Council grant will support full community participation in the emerging Balbriggan plan.
The proposition is known as a Public Realm Plan. Alison Harvey Planning and Development Officer with the Heritage Council gave a definition on Tues night of the increasingly-popular term as ''Public Realm refers to publicly-owned streets, sidewalks, rights-of-ways, parks and other publicly accessible open spaces, and public and civic buildings and facilities''.
Frank Snow, Cathaoirleach Balbriggan Town Council said that he had come to understand the term Public Realm as referring in particular to ''Town-Centres which have a strong sense of themselves, a sense-of-place, where comfort and convenience is maximised for pedestrians, shoppers, visitors, residents and traders alike''. ''In addition to better pedestrian and community facilities (in good public spaces supported by appropriate parking), Town-Centres which do best are those which can exploit attractive heritage and historical resources, whether in their buildings or in their history and in their cultural richness generally. Balbriggan Town-Centre has great potential in this regard'' said Frank.
Alison Harvey's presentation invited the audience to consider how in business and even in general community-morale terms, a Town-Centre's sense-of-place and its capacity to 'market' itself (to itself and to visitors), is boosted by its 'USP', its Unique Selling Proposition, i.e. the characteristic which make it different (the globalised world is full of 'sameness'!).
This characteristic is especially appealing when the differences relate to an attractive built environment based on history, heritage and tradition. Balbriggan Town Centre is rich in this regard. It has a magnificent harbour, beach, Martello Tower, Bremore Castle. It is characterised by owner-occupied and owner-managed small-scale shops many of which have traditional wooden shop fronts (even if some need refurbishment) - indeed in character more like some West Cork towns than in some adjoining towns. It has a beautiful Carnegie library and Town square; some heritage bank buildings and a high proportion of heritage pub buildings. Balbriggan has an internationally famous industrial heritage in its 18th and 20th century hosiery manufacturing traditions. It has an emerging cafe culture, a rail system and the M1 road system. And although not yet fully visible, Balbriggan has had massive Local Authority infrastructural investment in recent years, which has the capacity to support the revival now proposed.
As part the Public Realm Plan, a Town Centre (commercial) Health Check study is already under way in Balbriggan Town-Centre. This study is to measure various indicators of economic vitality and vibrancy (or lack of it) in the town centre and to monitor economic growth, as the implementation of the forthcoming plan progresses. Footfall baseline counts have been carried out as part of this study and a retailer survey is due to be carried out over the coming weeks by the Heritage Council working with Balbriggan Chamber support.
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