Work is at an advanced stage on MacDonagh Junction, the first of two major new commercial developments set to transform Kilkenny.
Chesterbridge Developments, backed by businessmen Paul Hanby and Paul Newman, is investing €250 million in a mix of retail, office and residential units on a 10.5-acre site beside the railway station.
Kilkenny County Council and CIÉ jointly own 9 per cent of the development. The builder is Michael McNamara & Co, a national building contractor with offices in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Lisdoonvarna.
The station - and the new shopping centre - are named after Thomas MacDonagh, one of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation who worked for some years as a teacher at St Kieran's College. In 1966, CIÉ renamed Kilkenny railway station MacDonagh Station in his memory.
Tim Kinsella, a Chesterbridge spokesman, said "about 600 people are employed on the huge construction project and work is on schedule with the opening planned for autumn 2007".
He added that "about half the 50,000sq m (538,195sq ft) development will be devoted to shopping and Dunnes Stores (which already has a major outlet on the city's St Kieran's Street) is secured as the anchor tenant with a shop of some 7,000sq m (75,347sq ft)."
Douglas Newman Good is handling negotiations for the letting of a separate mall containing 50 retail units of sizes varying from 62-1,685sq m (667-18,137sq ft). Prospective tenants are believed to include Next, Waterstones, Virgin, H Samuel and River Island.
MacDonagh Junction will provide Kilkenny with 25,100sq m (270,174sq ft) of new shopping space.
The rest of the development will include 101 one and two-bedroom apartments, a double-basement parking lot with space for 1,100 cars, civic offices and a bowling alley. A hotel is also being built and is likely to benefit from the increasing number of visitors who choose, wisely, to visit this compact city by train.
The site's "heritage buildings", including the former Kilkenny Workhouse and Victorian railway sheds, are being restored and incorporated into the development. Discussions are also underway about the creation of an appropriate memorial to hundreds of bodies discovered during site excavations in an unknown mass grave which is believed to date from the Famine.
Chesterbridge expects that MacDonagh Junction will create 1,000 full- and part-time jobs and lead to significant spin-off employment in firms supplying the centre and among the various businesses expected to rent the new office space.
Just a few hundreds yards from MacDonagh station lies the entrance to Kilkenny's livestock mart on Barrack Street. The mart is currently building a new facility outside the city at Cillín Hill on the Dublin road and plans, along with the NCT car-testing centre, to relocate there in the spring of next year - vacating a 13.2-acre site earmarked for an ambitious development.
Kmart Properties Ltd, a joint venture between Kilkenny Livestock Market Ltd and Melcorpo Property Development Ltd, has lodged a planning application for the €200 million first phase of Citymart, a mixed-use urban development totalling 48,729sq m (524,514sq ft) incorporating shops, restaurants, offices, cinema, healthcare centre, 48 apartments and 1,200 car-parking spaces. According to chairman David Lyons, Citymart will be "fully integrated into the expanding city" and the project will involve building a section of the proposed new inner relief road and be linked, via a new river crossing, to the city centre on the opposite bank of the River Nore. The promotional literature promises "galleria-style streets and architectural glass canopies to create Kilkenny city's most exciting shopping and lifestyle destination".
Kilkenny Borough Council has requested further information from Kmart but the company expects to receive a decision on the planning application "by the end of the year" and to begin demolition works on the mart site by spring. The anticipated schedule would see construction begin next July and last "about 18 months" with Citymart opening to the public in 2009.
Lyons says that "200,000 people live within a 45-minute drive of Kilkenny city centre" and he believes that "Citymart will become the number one shopping centre in the south-east".
He is currently negotiating with potential tenants but speculation has centred on Tesco, as Kilkenny is the only county in Ireland where the supermarket chain does not have a presence. A spokeswoman for Tesco said the company "does not comment on speculation". Marks & Spencer has also been touted as a tenant.
Both MacDonagh Junction and Citymart will compete with the well-established Market Cross shopping centre which has Superquinn as the anchor store, a lucrative central location, ample car-parking and enviable pedestrian access from the High Street.
Nick Crawford, of managing agent Douglas Newman Good, claims that "business is thriving" and is confident that Market Cross will not be hurt by the opening of MacDonagh Junction - "just as predictions that the opening of the Dundrum Town Centre would harm Grafton Street turned out to be wrong".
He said there are no immediate plans to roof the open-air central plaza at Market Cross and said many shoppers like its airy, unstuffy atmosphere. He said the lack of "cover" means that smokers can still enjoy the refuge of "outdoor" tables at a ground floor café.
Kmart's David Lyons's other Kilkenny interest, Melcorpo Commercial Properties, owns what he admits is a "tired-looking" shopping arcade in a prime High Street position. The company has sought "change of use" planning permission to convert the High Street Mall's nine retail units and restaurant into a single retail unit. An announcement about the plans is expected "within weeks".
