New Developments in Galway City

oh my god guys i seen this and just had to post it i just crapped my pants.
these are the plans for galway in the next 5 to 10 years
N6
The N6, estimated to cost €500 million, is presently at an advanced stage and the compulsory purchase of all lands is nearing completion, we understand all parts of this road will be under construction before the end of 2007. (The contracts have been awarded to the Spanish Giant Construction – P.J Hegarty Company. It is anticipated that this road will be open in 2010, largely impacting on areas like Kiltullagh, Athenry, Oranmore and the Ardaun Corridor.

GALWAY CITY OUTER BYPASS
The next phase will be the GCOB, the Galway City Outer Bypass, which involves the construction of 27km of roadway including the fifth bridge over the Corrib estimated to cost in the region of €340 million. The C.P.O. process has already begun on the road, which will commence at Briarhill/Garraun, continue north where it will cross the Tuam Road (N17) at Two Mile Ditch, travel in a westerly direction where there will be a major intersection at Ballindooley with the N84 Headford road.
This will open up access for areas like Corrandulla, Headford, etc. It will then continue west where it will cross over a new bridge on the Corrib at Menlo (this is very significant as it will be the 5th bridge over the Corrib), then continuing in a westerly direction towards Bushypark and dissecting Glenlo Abbey Golf Club, before crossing over the Moycullen Road (Junction A – benefiting Moycullen, Oughterard, etc.) and turning further west bypassing Knocknacarra and then emerging on the west side of Barna. It will be a dual-carriage and will be equivalent to a ring road around on the west/northern side of Galway City. This has huge implications for all of Galway. First of all, it will make commuting time from all of these areas much more accessible, creating serious opportunities for land development and providing further opportunities for house buyers, warehouses, commercial buildings, shopping centres and park and ride. Bearing in mind the continuation of the provision of the infrastructural services like sewer, water, energy and roads which will open up enormous development potential.
TRAIN STATION, HARBOUR AND C.I.E SITE
Ceannt station is about to be upgraded and C.I.E have a large land bank zoned C1 which is earmarked for the biggest development ever in Galway. It is proposed to construct a 600,000 sq.ft shopping centre which would be the second biggest enclosed shopping centre in Ireland after Dundrum. The total development will be 1,500,000 sq.ft or about €2 billion. A planning application is to be lodged for this in the summer of this year.

As it stands the project is now at an advanced stage with CIE and the Harbour Board, Coras Iompair Eireann and Galway City Council, are preparing a master plan for the area which will include shopping centres, high rise buildings and hotels encompassing the train station, adjacent to the bus station and the fair green which will also link the harbour. On completion, there will be shopping centres, office blocks, apartments and hotels all interlinked with possible access via Eyre Square, the harbour and the CIE station in one entity. Galway City Council have identified this as an area where high rise buildings may be built especially overlooking the water.

THE HARBOUR BOARD
The Harbour Board has a large landbank of c. 32 acres overlooking Galway Bay and are in the process of developing these lands. Their objective is to provide facilities for tourism, aqua centres, cultural centres and perhaps a concert hall together with the shops, pubs, restaurants, and leisure amenities, residential and offices, etc. It is anticipated that the new inner dock will be included in the National Development Plan 2 and the whole area will be revitalised and a new port is to be constructed which will be able to accommodate liners, yachts, etc. We also understand that there is presently a 40,000 tonne oil terminal under construction.

N17 & N18
This road is to be known as the Atlantic Corridor and this will create a vertical road from the north of the country to the south of the country. The effect will be to release land banks in areas like Clarinbridge, Kilcolgan, Ardrahan. It will also open up access to Shannon Airport and reduce travel times to areas like Sligo and Limerick. The CPO process on the Athenry to Ennis Road has already commenced and this road is estimated to cost €430 million.

N.U.I.G.
One of the biggest building projects ever undertaken in an Irish university
is to be erected on the shores of the River Corrib in a €400m expansion for
NUI Galway.
The biggest single development — a €55m engineering centre — will be the largest engineering school in the country and will become an iconic building for the university and the city itself due to its innovative design and visibility from the Quincentenial Bridge.
Another of the more exciting projects is a proposal to build an extra courthouse for the city in conjunction with the courts service which would be linked with a new law school to allow students to have direct access in a very practical way as to how the law works. The public will benefit from an extended walkway around the Corrib, which will become the central focus of the university due to a new entrance from Newcastle Road and an upgraded road along the length of the river.
The bulk of the 20 projects over 260 acres of prime city centre land are likely to be completed within five years, with the entire ‘Campus of the Future’ scheduled to be opened by 2015. Some projects have already begun — among them the €22m sports centre featuring a 25m swimming pool and the €5m cultural centre with cinema, theatre and art gallery.

NEW BRIDGE OVER THE CORRIB
This is a highly significant part of the infrastructure. We presently have four bridges but primarily the Quincentennial Bridge takes the bulk of the traffic together with the Salmon Weir Bridge. The intersection at the Headford road is enormously busy and is a real bottle neck in Galway, by constructing this 5th bridge it will relieve all of this pressure, traffic will not have to enter the city centre and can travel on the ring road.

TYNAGH ENERGY
Tynagh Energy is building Galway’s first power generating station. The €300 million power plant will be a modern state of the art facility using the latest in advanced engineering technology. It will use the cleanest available fuel – natural gas- which will significantly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. For the first time, Galway City and region will have a reliable and efficient source of power.

BROADBAND
The MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) managed by eNet has been installed around Galway and suppliers all kinds of cables to parks, hospital , companies now have a choice of supply choice and diversity.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Galway is set to become the capital of research and development for biotechnology in Ireland. As Ireland has now become known as a knowledge based economy it is important for the development of stronger links between industry and academia, Galway with its 20,000 students is well planned to harness these changes.
The reputation of N.U.I.G. is highly regarded, primarily driven by research successes. N.U.I.G. is the home to numerous centres of excellence in the biological and biomedical sciences industry. It is also home to the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Science and the Digital Enterprise Research Institute. The Government is funding this research which has exceeded from €10m in 2000 to €50m annual funding today. NUI Galway has had a strong culture of innovation dating back to the early 1980’s when the first Irish small business incubation units were opened on campus. The new bioincubators complement the existing incubators and provide a focus for the commercialisation of the results of biotechnology research in the western region.
It is believed that Biotechnology will be one of the significant technologies of the early 21st century. Simply put it the application of knowledge about living organisms and their components to make new products and to develop new industrial processes. People have used Biotechnology for centuries for example fermentation processes (beer and wine) and food production using naturally occurring enzymes (cheese, yogurts, etc).
Modern Biotechnology has developed a range of techniques which are applied to commercial use. The US is the clear leader in development and commercialisation of modern Biotechnology with Europe following behind. The pace of change in biotechnology today is extraordinarily rapid. There are four categories of companies within Biotechnology – Agbio and environmental, biopharmaceuticals, Diagnostics and suppliers and services.
The Biopharmaceuticals sector is estimated to account for 70% of the total industry with 20% in food and 10% others. The government is committed to developing long term policies and investing in the key areas needed to sustain and grow the sector into the next generation. It also seeks to maximize the creation and nurture the development of new commercially focused early stage biotechnology companies in Ireland and Galway. It also seeks to target foreign origin biotechnology entrepreneurs and early stage companies with potential to establish in Ireland.
Galway’s biotechnology companies are Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Merit, Abbott, Creganna and Tyco healthcare. These companies have very significant research and development sections. Also in Galway we have the ICT sector which is Information Communication Technology, as Ireland has now become known as a knowledge based economy we have moved to a knowledge intensive business from a labour intensive business. What is required for this is 3rd or 4th year graduates keeping pace with the rapid growth of multi nationals. In this sector, we have APC, Sap, Fidelity, Cisco Systems, Oracle and Hewlett Packard and a recent announcement by Cisco created 200 jobs in Galway which was a superb win for IDA Ireland against stiff international competition. Cisco is regarded as the world wide leader in networking products and services and it is to establish a dedicated world class research and development in Galway with the support of the IDA. Cisco develops and sells networking and communication technology products and services for transporting data, voice and video to customers worldwide. The Galway centre will be an integral part of Cisco’s future world wide research and development activities. It will employ skilled graduates and is projected to grow to 200 positions over the next 3 years, employing people at degree level and above with a number of positions requiring master and PHD qualifications.
Many of these companies operate in a herd like mentality when they locate to one region. Galway now is very well represented with medical device companies, IT Companies, etc. It also has the added advantage of attracting key personnel to a region when they are many similar type companies. If, for example, an employee is to locate to a region, he would not be attracted by one company as if he is not successful in that work environment he can look outside to other similar companies in the same region.

thers even more the link is:

http://www.kmsgalway.com/menu.asp?menu=122&parent=0&item=0003

The merits for the outer bypass are far from proven and the real motivation behind the release appears to be opening up Connemara for more one off houses which the authors seem to do quite well out of; unfortunately the link you supplied doesn’t work but the parent site also lists this

Sites for Sale

The opening of the Galway to Athenry commuter rail service and the concentration of industrial investment by the IDA in Oranmore is the way forward for Galway which if current development pattern persist will become entirely gridlocked in the centre if alternative settlement patterns are not adopted very soon.

I hope there is a lot more to come; however I found that press release to be a particularly crude piece of cheerleading. The usual tripe talking up the market listing the entire wish list without apportioning an order of importance to the various projects.

I agree that great things are happening at UCG and the campus facilities really have underpinned a lot of very high end R & D units. I further agree that Ceannt offers an excellent opportunity along with the neighbouring docklands to create a model regeneration district at density.

Should the Ceannt Docklands area be combined with the Athenry rail and Arduan bus corridor then you have a very tight spatial plan that could make Galway a very efficient and high quality environment.

The alternative is the continuation of the one off 4 by 4 model underpinned by the outer bypass right through to Barna. That model will lead to chaos if not arrested.

Just read in the City Tribune that the Ceannt Station quarter will include two 16 storey buildings and five 8 storey buildings.Sounds promising, hopefully it will be something bold and exciting, but no signs of any plans available yet,

that does sound promising gakway rush but i think there using ceannt startion as an exuse to build commericial and residential buildings rather than vastly improve the station its self and the overall traffic problems in Galway.But i suppose it would be cool to have a 16 storey building in Galway

It is entirely premature to predict the reaction to any scheme before it is lodged and people can have a look. If the City is offered a legoland it will be shot down. However if a design worthy of the City is proposed there is no doubt that the Bord will pass the scheme regardless of who says or signs what. It will be interesting to look at where the mass is sited and the legibility of the contribution to the City skyline. Whatever happens densities are set to increase dramatically and that is real progress whatever way you assess it. The real question is do the applicants go for a scheme that will clear first time out or do they do what both applicants for former CIE rail sites have done and deliberately ensure that the proposals are red carded first time out?

@galwayrush wrote:

Our Green Mayor is one of the objectors to the proposed Galway Outer By-Pass.:confused:

You can’t be surprised that he made a submission on this. It is clear that the N6 needs to be bedded in to serve the main industrial areas off the N17 and Headford Rd. However continuation to Bushy Park should be 2 plus 1 and the proposal to bring this route to Barna is totally unviable. It would if completed in its current form completely remove any prospect of a sustainable development pattern for the City.

Where road objectors have lost all battles recently on National Primary routes it has been predictable as the NRA has been able to point to the National Development Plan and National Spatial Strategy to justify construction on the basis of core National objectives.

Building a commuter dual carriageway to Barna will be shot down on the basis of not being national infrastructure and facilitating unsustainable development patterns.

It is further interesting that the mayor looks set to become connaught’s first green TD. If the polls are to be believed it will be at the expense on Noel Grealish who built has campaign on this road. A changing order it appears will emerge.

Roche lays the blame over water crisis
Thursday, 12 April 2007 12:11
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has said that disastrous mistakes by management were to blame for the Galway water crisis.

The minister said the mistakes were made over a number of years.

He said he did not understand why clean water is not being delivered into households at this stage.

Minister Roche added that he has offered every resource available to deal with the cryptosporidium outbreak.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Today with Tom McGurk, the minister was reluctant to get drawn into a debate about who was responsible, but agreed that if no-one was held to account, the crisis could happen again.

Is he right?

He is second only to Bertie in that department;

I am shocked that opposed to working with those he manages that he went on a spree of character assinanation casting aspertions over the entire water services division of two local authorities. This is the same Dick Roche who announced that €21m had been sitting unused for a couple of years. He then grants €48m and has not done the one thing he could have done in the short term which is ring up Seamus ‘booted out of transport’ Breannan to get free water for the most vulnerable of the City & County population. Ultimately €21m is not €48m and for Roche to blame others when granting less than half what was required is just Dicking around.

One also wonders did this sit on Cullens desk for years while he was in environment, when exactly were the funds made available, were they tied to specific projects?

Aklthough I doubt that I actually think that Dick’s ego is probably big enough to trash his own colleagues reputation if he thought there were brownie points in it; state employees fellow cabinet members no difference really.

Roche blames management for water crisis
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 12th April, 2007

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has said mistakes by local authority management in Galway are responsible for the current drinking water contamination crisis.

Mr Roche said he had offered every resource available to help deal with the cryptosporidium outbreak.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Todayprogramme, Mr Roche said he did not understand why clean water was not being delivered to households at this stage.

He agreed that if no one was held accountable, the same thing could happen again in other local authority areas.

“I think there were some catastrophic management errors in Galway over the years…I think that there was a serious problem with the operation of the Terryland plant,” Mr Roche said.

“But as in every other local authority, to be fair to the current people who are in place, they weren’t necessarily in place a few years ago.”

Asked whether if people were allowed to “get away with it”, in terms of a failure to hold people to account for the crisis, they might “do it again”, Mr Roche said:

“It’s not an unreasonable thing to say at all”.

The water crisis is now in its fifth week, with tens of thousands of people forced to boil their tap water as a result of contamination by the cryptosporidium parasite. There have been at least 100 cases of gastric illness due to the contamination.

Residents of Galway city will be allowed to purchase two bottles of water for the price of one as part of a plan to provide clean drinking water.

The local authority has, however, rejected councillors’ calls to provide the water entirely free of charge, claiming it would not be logistically possible.

At the end of March, Mr Roche announced a €48.4m plan to alleviate the water contamination crisis in Galway city and county.

The package includes a commitment to speed up the development of the new treatment plant in Galway at a cost of over €21 million.

An additional €27.4 million has been allocated for increased storage and water conservation measures in Tuam which will allow for additional water to be made available to Galway city in the longer term.