The opening of phase one of The Bridge House hotel in the centre of Tullamore, Co Offaly, this weekend highlights the pace at which the development of the midlands is progressing.
Less than 18 months ago, Tullamore had limited accommodation until the Tullamore Court Hotel opened, offering over 73 bedrooms, conference facilities and a leisure centre. The Bridge House is bringing a further 70 bedrooms on to the market and it, too, will have conference facilities and a leisure centre.
Speaking about the £7 million development this week, the owner, Mr Christy Maye, said when he purchased The Bridge House in the 1970s his intention had been to build bedrooms over the restaurant and bar facilities.
"I put together a package to build the rooms and then The Greville Arms came on to the market in Mullingar. I purchased that instead," he said.
"I continued to expand The Bridge House as a venue where people could relax and be comfortable and eat a variety of food at reasonable prices."
The lounge was twice "Super Pub of Ireland" and won the "Best Pub in Leinster" award and a National Catering Award in recent years.
Work on building the new hotel, which is at the rear of the existing premises and will be joined to the pub, restaurant and disco, is almost complete.
The accommodation will include five executive suites and a presidential suite. The leisure centre will have a 55 ft indoor swimming pool, sauna and Jacuzzi.
"The leisure facilities will also feature a unique outdoor spa. I think it will be the only one in the country. I saw a couple of them in Germany and I was very taken with them," said Mr Maye.
"The conference centre will have an outdoor garden, a conservatory which will integrate into The Bridge House, a kind of marriage of the old and the new," he said.
The new hotel will host its first national conference today when career guidance teachers from around the State hold their annual get together.
"We will bring the rest of the development on line as quickly as possible and the hotel should be open to the public in a few weeks," he said.
Mr Maye has had a fascinating career, most of which was in the leisure sector and he is credited with having invented the discotheque here in 1965.
"I was driven to it really. Some of the show-bands which were around at that time were brutal and I could not stand the attempts they were making to imitate the music of the time," he said.
"At that stage, no one would dance to records but I tried it anyway, getting the best sound system that I could. I also discovered that a projector light could literally boil ink mixed with hair oil.
"I put the mix of ink and hair oil between two sheets of glass and put that close to the projector light. It projected the movement and the colour on to the walls and what I called disco-ago-go was born," he said.
He moved his experimental disco from the Parochial Hall to the Lake County Hotel and then to other venues around the country.
Within a short time his invention was taken up by other disco operators.
Ballymahon-born, Mr Maye has a love of horses and breeds them on his farm near Mullingar, Co Westmeath.