The first meeting of a steering group established to oversee the multimillion-pound development of Cork's docklands will be briefed by the UK-based consultants, Urban Initiatives, in the city tomorrow.
They have been retained by the local authority to plan one of the most ambitious projects undertaken in the city.
During the next six months Urban Initiatives will consult widely with private enterprise and various other interested groups. After that they will present a final report to Cork Corporation on the feasibility of turning the city's decrepit docklands into a vibrant, 200-acre zone.
This would incorporate residential accommodation, new businesses, green spaces and river amenities for the public. The ultimate aim is to link the hitherto almost off-limits docks area to the bustling, daily life of the city.
The success of the concept will have a profound bearing on how Cork city will look in a decade. The docks plan is no less a blueprint for the future than the Cork Land Use and Transportation Study (LUTS) was in the 1970s.
But unlike LUTS, which depended heavily on EU and Government cash, this plan will be funded almost entirely by private enterprise working with the local authority.
The corporation will lay on the necessary infrastructure, streamline the planning process and offer designated status incentives to potential developers.
From start to completion over a 10year period, the project will develop in stages. As of now, the final cost is merely notional but estimates begin in multiples of £200 million.
This is not aspirational, it is going to happen, says the Cork city manager, Mr Joe Gavin.
The project is being expedited in a way few others have in the city during the past three decades. It was accepted by the local authority in 1989 that a revitalised docks area could provide the spur Cork needs if it is to develop into a new millennium city. But until now the catalyst has been lacking.
Mr Gavin has committed himself to the project, noting on his arrival in Cork last year that construction cranes were conspicuously absent from the city centre.
At tomorrow's meeting in Cork the project director of the Urban Initiatives, Mr Chris Whife, will set out his stall. Mr Whife told Southern Report that he believed the proximity of the docklands to the city centre offered a unique opportunity to bring this neglected part of Cork into the mainstream of city life.
The plan is to make this part of old Cork the city's new commercial driving force, with a mixture of traditional and new-age companies operating side by side and complementing the traditional hub of the city centre.
The extensive tract of land involved runs from City Hall, taking in the docks on both channels of the Lee and Kent Railway Station, to the Showgrounds near Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
One of the key elements for the consultants will be to find a funding mechanism attractive to outside investors. By next September a blueprint should be ready to go to the city council. Members of the corporation, such as Fianna Fail's Mr Noel O'Flynn, are already champions of the project and support for it would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
Plans for new rail infrastructure in Cork will dovetail with the docks development. The main educational institutions in the city, including UCC and CIT, will be invited to locate parts of their campuses there in keeping with the policy of bringing the gown closer to the town.
According to Mr Gavin, a special team will be assembled at City Hall whose sole function will be to drive the project forward over the next decade.
"The concept is an exciting one. It will breathe new life into a part of Cork that has become run down over the years but which has enormous potential," he said.
Urban Initiatives has worked previously on the Cork Historic Centre Action Plan, the Custom House Docks and the Grand Canal Docks projects in Dublin, and in Melbourne, Hamburg and throughout the UK.