First indoor ski resort planned for Tyrrelstown

A WHITE Christmas may be unlikely this year but skiing and ice-climbing at Ireland's first indoor ski resort are on the cards in 2010.

Plans were unveiled yesterday for Snowtopia, a leisure and extreme sports centre at Tyrrelstown, 14 kilometres northwest of Dublin.

The mooted €100 million development consists of more than 10,000 square metres of "real snow" cover, Ireland's first ice climbing area and a separate rock climbing facility.

Similar projects have been successful in Manchester and Milton Keynes and the developer, Twinlite, is hopeful that despite the recession this will provide "a little bit of escape". It expects over a million people to visit the site every year.

"Even if things get really bad most people will still be working and will spend money on entertainment, especially if it is low cost," Rick Larkin, financial director of Twinlite, said. Apart from the cinema and the gym, there are not many leisure options in Ireland, he added.

Twinlite hopes the development will appeal to people in advance of skiing holidays abroad. "They can come to us for a day and take a lesson and not spend their expensive time on their ski holiday learning how to fall over," Mr Larkin said.

The ski slope will be built using two slanted pieces of concrete. Snow will be created when condensed water is fired on to a very cold atmosphere.

The developer played down any environmental concerns, saying the process was not very taxing on the environment due to advances in technology. "By cooling the ski slope we get to heat the rest of the building with the heat that we take out of it, so there's a sort of a payback in it there,"Mr Larkin said.

What is billed as Ireland's first digital theatre, a paintball centre and restaurants, as well as the pre-existing Park Plaza hotel, will be part of the new complex.

About 1,000 jobs will be created when the site is finished and a further 1,000 people will be employed during construction, according to the developers.

Plans for the resort are being submitted to planning authorities today and developers are hopeful it will go ahead in conjunction with the N2/N3 link road.

It is hoped to start construction in July 2009.