Monuments to the Celtic Tiger

Abandoned/Delayed Construction Sites.

This one can be more than a one liner. It's highly topical and very much in the Tús vein. I have unconfirmed information on a few sites around the country:

- Parkway Valley site on the Castletroy side of Limerick. Planned to be the largest shopping centre in Munster. A large amount of the basic structure built (lift shafts, structural girders, etc.) and 8 cranes sitting idle since early last year.

- The hotel up in Kilternan in the Dublin Mountains seems to be completely stalled (think Heneghan Peng and Henchion Reuter involved in parts of this scheme)

- Newlands Cross Flyover.

- New Kevin Street Garda station in Dublin.

- Plot on South Richmond St. Dublin

Sure there are many more, please forward if you know of others.

“Other people have talked about putting underground parking in and beefing up the infrastructure enough that somebody could put some kind off structure on top, and just waiting it out as a parking structure until then,” he explained.
Underground parkades with green roofs as city parks are also being considered.

Qoute from councilor in Calgary, Canada............clearly a widespread problem!

Number of possible angles here, Would be useful research to catalogue and map locations, apparently quite a few sites around the country, more so outside Dublin.

Potential re-uses could range from:

- Invite Temporary Artistic interventions to cover eye-sores.

- Practical re-uses dependent on scope of works carried out, foundations, services to tap into etc.

- Use by peripheral groups where need required, Traveller sites, Homeless cleaning facilities (as per Niall's idea) etc.

Could also be interesting overlap with research into potential use of NAMA sites.

The other issue I raised was that of vacant comercial, residential & industrial space left over from the end of the boom. Not sure where to go with this stuff, suggestions welcome.

I had also looked into Newspaper reports of struggling hotels and potential re-uses there, it seems these reports were greatly exagerated but worth keeping an eye on.