Town Planning

[Eamonnca1]

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but this is a soapbox topic for me!

Last time I was in Lurgan I saw a few vacant shop-fronts, plus a few missing teeth. But there was still a fair bit of life about it. Lots of quirky small boutique style shops selling gifts, clothes, locally flavoured stuff. The pubs still seem to be going strong, and the selection of cafes and restaurants seems to have improved since the 1990s.

Banking? That's a declining industry as far as retail frontage goes. For that you can thank online and mobile banking. Bank of Ireland are taking a bit of heat for mass closures of physical branches, but frankly I'm surprised they lasted this long. Over here in California there's still a plethora of over-sized bank buildings sitting on prime real estate with 2 or 3 people working in them and ten times more dedicated parking than they need. I could see that shaking out in the next few years.

Parking? Great cities aren't known for their abundance of parking. If anything there's probably too much of it. In Lurgan people gripe about it being hard to park, but the fact is they've leveled entire streets to make way for parking and there's never been more storage space given over to the car. Half of Carnegie Street obliterated to make way for the storage of 30 cars outside Tesco, when they could have put the new Tesco on the site of the old Grattan Centre between Castle Lane and Windsor Avenue, which  as far as I know has been derelict for about ten years or more.  Then there's all that derelict ground between Castle Lane and Church Walk. Why has that never been developed into a square with business space on the ground and apartments above?

Which brings me to my next point - we need to go back to having more people living in the middle of towns. There's huge pent-up demand for town-centre apartments among people in their 20s. A single fella who's still chasing girls doesn't need to live in a suburban semi-detached house with a front garden, that's for later when he's starting a family.  Increase the town centre population and you'll soon see more footfall and plenty of retail and entertainment businesses coming back to the high street.

Newry? I'm surprised to see a native of that town calling it a "shithole," I always quite liked the place and the people from there. I ran the Newry 10k a few years ago and thought it was fantastic. Lovely run along the towpath and back into town. I was surprised to see fountains in the canal, I thought it'd be better to make it navigable again.

I'm also surprised at the lack of pedestrian frontage facing the water, especially where the Buttercrane could have put some windows on the street to improve safety and the pedestrian experience there. No need for those blank walls facing the canals, the older buildings have windows that overlook the canals and have great potential. Look at how Amsterdam does it, they celebrate the canals and put them centre stage, not turn their backs on them.

I recently had a look on Google street and satellite view at the old railway line that ran through the middle of Newry. Apparently there's a new leisure centre there now, but if they hadn't put it there they could have opened up the possibility of reopening the old railway line all the way into the old Edward St station which is now a Translink bus depot that doesn't really need to be there.  They could still get the railway in as far as the leisure centre though, so any trains terminating at Newry could go into the middle of town instead of the current station that's closer to Bessbrook (and used to be called Newry/Bessbrook as it happens.) There used to be a tram that ran from Bessbrook down into Newry too, and most of that old route still seems to be clear.

Speaking of trains, the railway network needs to be brought back. It's a disgrace the lines that were closed in the 1950s, especially the Portadown-Dungannon-Omagh-Strabane-Derry line that was hugely popular. But plenty of the routes are still clear and could well be reopened if rail were taken as seriously as road funding. There's always plenty of money for road projects that generate more traffic, but a lot more scepticism about rail projects that would reduce traffic on roads as well as revitalise town centres that could be made more accessible without the need for parking. The Portadown Armagh Railway Society has had some successful at lobbying to get their old line reopened, it's got as far as a feasibility study and there seems to be a lot of support for it from the council and the executive.

Speaking of buses, if I had my way a town like Lurgan would have shuttle buses running in continuous loops around the town ferrying people in and out of the town centre. One for Teghnaven, one for Killwilke, one for Mourneview, and maybe one for the Avenue Rd. Let the Chamber of Commerce set it up, run it at a loss, but get people into the town without having to drive. If there's a bus going past every 5 or 10 minutes then there'll be more people using it. Sell weekly all-you-can-eat passes so people pay a weekly fare and then use the bus as much as they like. Call it "Sureline" and paint them orange and white to evoke the history of buses in the town. Employ local drivers who know the people getting on and off, just like the old Sureline days.

As for heavy-lifting retail, I think there's some value in keeping some of that in the middle of town. I hate out-of-town retail parks, they're soulless and they just generate traffic. I like the Dutch system of having medium-sized food stores in town that people access on foot or by bike nearly every day, instead of doing one big weekly shop that needs a car to haul everything. But that requires retrofitting the streets to be bike friendly, and Ireland (north and south) has a long way to go in that regard.

[WeeDonns]

Retail is dead. It's was always a pretty terrible experience and Covid has all but finished it. Shops that will continue exist are those that offer an added value service. Clothes shops were the assistant knows what he or she is doing and can give you a personal shopping experience. Any of you parents might be familiar with that shoe shop in P'down. They measure and check the child's feet and fit the shoes appropriately. An added value. I remember getting shoes as a child in it and our children all get shoes out of it.

The way to revive town centres is by enticing people back to live in them or pushing commercial office space. Otherwise you're looking a town centres with 62 vape shops, 87 Turksh barbers and 45 coffee shops. Depressing.

In Omagh the place to go to for kids shoes, for the same reason you've highlighted, was Clarks. Apparently it has shut for good in the latest lockdown.
With 3 young kids we were in it often in the past few years, primarily for the shoe fitting service. They almost never had the sizes in stock, so you'd order and have them posted directly to the house or pickup in store a few days later.
You can now just buy the measuring tool for £12 online and order shoes from anywhere. It didn't make much sense to me for them to still have a store in town simply for the measuring service - and obviously no longer to them

I see so many of our stores in town as just pickup/drop off points for online shopping - Next, M&S (excl food), Argos etc - they could all just be replaced by 1 big Collect+ store on the edge of town


David McWilliams is talking alot about this on twitter atm - he's proposing a dereliction charge on property owners who let town centre property go derelict, to try and force them to sell it rather than hold on to it for years until it becomes more valuable.

Some are saying that we need people to move back into town & city centres to revive them. I can understand that thinking, but I'm not sure the people exist here that would want to live in town (?) maybe they do.
I get what Eamonnca1 is saying there about a young guy in his 20s preferring to live in the center of town but they're often priced out of it? (& no/expensive parking). This probably only works for City centres, not market towns like Omagh etc where there's little happening

There was planning permission being contested recently around the cathedral Quarter area of Belfast - those campaigning against a load of 1 bed apartments were claiming there should be more 2 & 3 beds to bring families back into the city centre. Sounds nice in theory - but would many people want to raise a family right in the middle of town?

A low cost (even free) regular dependable public transport service is a good idea to get people to town & leave the car at home
I'm all for the outdoor cafe culture, I really enjoy it in other European cities even in the cold. Some local places put real effort into it in recent times. e.g. Mourne Seafood in Belfast, proving it can work