THE creation of a main "civic thoroughfare", stretching from the Rotunda Hospital to Christ Church, is among a new set of proposals to regenerate O'Connell Street submitted to Dublin Corporation.
The proposals, drawn up by the Dublin City Centre Business Association, were discussed yesterday with the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald.
They are contained in a report, A City Centre Perspective, compiled after a series of seminars by the TCD Centre for Urban and Regional Studies.
A main civic thoroughfare would cost £10 million on top of the normal capital grant to Dublin Corporation, according to the report. The thoroughfare would involve some radical rebuilding and lay down certain rules about shop fronts and insist on "enhancing the visual quality of the three dimensional streetscape".
The chief executive of the association, Mr Tom Coffey, said yesterday the Anna Livia monument was likely to be removed in the next few months, as it was not "compatible" with the introduction of the Luas light rail project to O'Connell Street.
Other suggestions in the report include: the direction election of Dublin's lord mayor to give a "greater voice to the people; ensuring tax incentives for all historic buildings restored; and a crackdown on crime at a "petty level". All businesses should have to allocate a percentage of their yearly budget to help promotional activities for the city centre.
Mr Coffey called on the new Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, to "rethink" the decision of the last government to build a national conference centre at the RDS in Ballsbridge.
The report also calls for the establishment of a fund, to be administered by the Dublin Civic Trust, for special projects to "renew" O'Connell Street and surrounding areas.
The Georgian squares on the north side of the city "are neglected and crying out for middle class residents with real purchasing power," says the report. Improvements to those squares would produce a spinoff for O'Connell Street, Mr Coffey said.
He said crime on the street was being tackled by the new CCTV cameras, which played a part in the Garda arrest of a man last week in connection with a fatal stabbing outside a fastfood restaurant near the Gresham Hotel.
