Cork Outlet Centre - Pure Robbery, like!

This is really turning into a Cork-only blog over the recent weeks. Today is yet another article dealing with the city on Leeside, although for a change, it is not Cork City Council that will be the object of my scorn. That is directed at the wonderful gentlemen in Cork County Hall, the formerly highest building in the country. High is an apt term as the county council must have been high as fuck when they came up with their latest get-rich-quick scheme. But before I write myself into a rage yet again, I think a bit of backstory is in order.

Back in 2019, Cork city expanded its boundaries following a years-long battle with the County in a much-needed expansion. This expansion had been fought tooth and nail by Cork County Council, who had spent much of the preceding decades building up an iron noose of business parks and shopping centres around the city in an attempt to syphon off rates from the city. Naturally, county councillors did not want to give up this source of income and instead lobbied for an expanded council so they could not just keep their own commercial rates but also get their hands on those of the city proper. I wrote about this whole sorry affair back in 2015 in a blog post that almost no one read. Anyway, thankfully, the government in Dublin wasn’t swayed by this “poor me” campaign by the county and so, the new expanded borders came into effect on June 1st, 2019.

Fast forward to 2020 and Cork County Council put forward a newly developed plan for a brand new outlet centre in Carrigtwohill on the outskirts of Cork City. The project would mean a €100 million investment according to the developer, it would create up to 850 jobs and be similar to Kildare Village, a similar outlet centre located, shockingly enough, near Kildare and outside Dublin. The outcry from Cork City Council was predictably swift and vociferous and as much as I’m usually critical of the city council, I have to agree with them here. I’ll go through my reasons for this a bit later in this post. For now, let’s stick to the chronology of events. Cork County Council unsurprisingly rubber-stamped the development almost as soon as it landed on their metaphorical desks, before the national planning regulatory body put the brakes on the whole project, helped by a ministerial intervention. Not to be deprived of their cash grab, the county launched a legal challenge in the high court which succeeded for some inexplicable reason. I’d love to see the movements on the bank accounts of that particular judge in the months coming up to the decision. At the time of writing, I’m not sure what the current status of the project is or what the next steps by the city will be, I just hope they’ll keep fighting this parasitic project.

And make no mistake, this is parasitic. On first look, the location along the N25, a four-lane highway heading east from Cork, as well as close to the Cork-Midleton rail line may seem innocuous and indeed smart, as it will mean that any shoppers have easy access. When you look closer though, you’ll notice that the site is spectacularly ill-suited to attract shoppers from anywhere else but Cork city. The N25 is basically a suburban commuter route that merges into a two-lane road just east of Midleton. While it is far from the worst road in Ireland, I doubt anyone from Waterford or even Wexford is going to hit that road to drive to a new outlet centre, not when they’ve got the amazing Dundrum Shopping Centre a similar drive away, just on much better roads. Similarly, the site is poorly placed to attract customers from north or west of the city. Make no mistake, the location has been specifically chosen to attach to Cork city like a leech and suck out every bit of economic blood the council can get.

Situated right at the edge of cities, shopping centres such as Mahon Point (lower centre) only really manage to do one thing, and that's suck the life blood out of any nearby urban area. To be fair though, Mahon Point is actually within the area of Cork city, so at least council taxes stay within the city.

Now, to be fair, Cork City Council and the traders of the city haven’t exactly made such an endeavour especially hard to pull off. There’s no coherent retail marketing strategy, urban dereliction is rampant with no action by the council to combat this, and attempts at making the city centre a more attractive place are shoddy, piecemeal and more often than not sabotaged by the traders themselves, as with the Bus Priority measures on Patrick Street that a number of, pardon my French, absolute cunts effectively castrated a while back! However, the ongoing abject failure by the city does not in any way justify such a parasitic move. This is all the more true given Cork County Council’s previous track record. One just needs to look at two locations for this, Douglas and Little Island. 

With haphazard pedestrianisation attempts, whether they be late such as here on Oliver Plunkett Street,...

...or simply shoddily implemented, such as here on Emmet Place, Cork City Council is certainly not helping their own case of making Cork an attractive shopping destination!

Both areas lie just outside the old 1960s boundaries of Cork city, meaning that until the boundary extension, they fell under the auspices of Cork County Council, something that is still the case for Little Island. Douglas, originally a small village at one of the extremities of Cork’s Inner Harbour, has effectively been gutted, plastered with two massive shopping centres, apartments and townhouses with the architectonic consistency of a spilled bag of Lego bricks and a road network that even a demon prince of hell would feel guilty about conjuring up, so confusing and poorly designed is it. Little Island is hardly any better. While the road network here is a bit more straightforward than in Douglas, which isn’t exactly a high bar to clear, some bright spark in the county planning department decided to route all the traffic for five business parks, one retail park and several chemical/pharmaceutical plants through one motorway exit. Yes, you read that right: One. Oh, and wedged in between all those plants and retail parks is Little Island village, which all that traffic must also pass through. With that kind of track record, how the hell can anyone believe that the very same council won’t also turn that new outlet centre into a clusterfuck of biblical proportions?

Little Island, seen here in the lower right corner of this photo, is one of the most poorly planned and executed industrial developments in the country, only served by one single access road.

While often marketed as one of the most desirable areas of Cork for some inexplicable reason, Douglas (centre right) shows the incompetence and abject greed of Cork County Council like few other places, cramming two shopping centres into a small patch literally just across the road from the city!

All this is to say nothing of the inherent issues in outlet centres themselves. Leaving aside the obvious horrible ecological aspect of having a greenfield site that is only accessible by car, the concept has a number of other major weaknesses. The big one is the fact that outlet centres are effectively fashion monocultures, with maybe a few cafes or restaurants thrown in for good measure. As such, they are uniquely vulnerable to economic crises or fluctuations like, say pandemics or supply chain collapses. Sound familiar? As such, they can easily turn from a massive profit centre for a local authority to an abandoned collection of concrete boxes with fancy facades slowly crumbling in the middle of nowhere. The increasing dominance of online retail even in the fashion and clothing sectors further undermines the economic rationale for outlet centres, especially since their supposed cost savings compared to regular retail aren’t really that great to begin with. City based traders can still expect to catch a certain amount of walk-in traffic that are in the city anyway, something that simply doesn’t happen on greenfield sites.

Increased pedestrianisation and the creation of pleasant outdoor spaces is probably the best option Cork city has to increase its attractiveness as a shopping destination.

At the moment, the city's approach to that seems to still be pretty scattershot, with pedestrianised enclaves such as the Huguenot Quarter (above) separated by busy, or full on congested roads and thoroughfares.

Having said all that, I do believe that there is a case to be made for such an outlet centre in county Cork, albeit in a different location. Experience in Germany has shown that these centres can have a significant positive impact in structurally weak areas or areas that are heavily dependent on tourism. In Cork this covers basically outside of the Cork Harbour area and some stretches along the south and west coasts of the county. As such, literally ANY other location would be preferable over the one designated by Cork County Council. My personal preference would be a location in North Cork near the M8 motorway, ideally somewhere around Mitchelstown or Fermoy. Such a location would give the city enough breathing space, while being ideally suited to capture a lot of the shopping traffic currently heading to Kildare Village. The location would also be close enough to Limerick to attract shoppers from there, while also capturing potential customers from Counties Waterford or Tipperary. It would also provide a much needed impetus for economic development outside the Cork city metro area, which the county has traditionally depended on and exploited. 

This is of course also a risky proposition as well. There’s no guarantee such a centre will take off, it will require an intense marketing campaign to attract both brands and shoppers. However, it would be an important step in promoting a more balanced development of the county. Given the recent “emanations” from Cork County Council and its councillors, I’m forced to conclude however that the necessary foresight, intelligence and willingness to take risks have long since left County Hall and barred from ever coming back. Cork County Council appears to be addicted to the easy money gained by sucking the city of Cork dry and no one seems to be willing to put the council into the rehab it needs!