Businesses should not fear change - An evolving city centre
Change is constant but as we are human, how that change is delivered is not. How change is managed, or embraced, often defines whether evolution has a positive impact or not. Irish Water was set up to deliver a badly needed social good but because the project was poorly imagined and even more poorly communicated, it fell victim to the naysayers’ bile. It languishes in the graveyard of good ideas killed by ineptitude. Another generation will have to resolve the country’s water crisis. Postcodes are another advance consigned to the white elephants’ knackery because of mismanagement. There are myriad examples.
It is possible, but not inevitable, that the project to modernise the centre of Cork City by limiting vehicular access to St Patrick’s Street might end up there too. A daily driving ban from 3pm to 6.30pm was introduced on March 27.
Unsurprisingly, there has been stiff opposition from some traders who say it is another nail in the coffin of independent businesses. That opposition stands despite the successful limiting of vehicular access to the neighbouring Oliver Plunkett St and its offshoots many years ago.
It is too early to say how other city users view the change but projections that suggest an additional 5,000 to 6,000 people will be living or working in the city centre within a few years means real change cannot be avoided. How it is managed is the only valid question.
Like traders everywhere, Cork City businesses face huge challenges. The suburbanisation of retailing usually with free parking; time-poor customers; a growing awareness of the impact of private cars in cities; hit-and-miss public transport; and, probably most of all, consume-everything online retailing all have a negative impact. These are huge challenges that will not go away whether there are cars in St Patrick’s Street or not. City businesses, however, are not the only ones facing huge challenges. Officialdom, local or national, labour under a huge credibility deficit.
Many years ago the city promised a “necklace of park-and-ride facilities” to ease city congestion but only one — the loss-making Black Ash — was delivered. In May 1999, the Jack Lynch Tunnel was opened to considerable fanfare but traffic growth was grossly underestimated, so it is now a daily Gethsemane. Officialdom’s we-know-best autocracy around city flood prevention measures is another example of this disconnect. Decades-long squabbling over inevitable boundary extensions hardly inspired confidence. The destruction of mature communities on the city’s western flanks to facilitate insatiable student accommodation needs is another example of slapdash public administration.
A century ago horse-drawn trams dotted St Patrick’s Street. They are no more. In another century today’s street will seem as anachronistic as the 1918 Pana. That inevitability cannot be realised by official fiat or while businesses oppose progress. Traders must embrace the future but City Hall must do far, far more to midwife it. The city cannot afford its own Irish Water debacle. Proper planning can draw the future’s sting long before it arrives. Let’s get on with it.
