€25 million project an early Christmas present for Galway

A blueprint for a new city cultural headquarters, anchored by a library, was hailed as an early Christmas present for Galway when it was unveiled this week.

But the location for the proposed new Dyke Road campus hasn’t engendered festive spirit in everyone. Some Galway city councillors and An Taisce have a ‘sinking feeling’ that the €25 million project is to be built on a flood plain and others fear car parking spaces, and the revenue they generate, will be lost.

City Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath was lauded as visionary after briefing elected members on a broad outline of the planned new Galway city library and cultural campus off the Headford Road.

Mr McGrath said the project would extend the city centre through “urban regeneration and revitalisation”.

Though he was light on detail, Mr McGrath secured agreement to proceed to the next stages of delivering a project that would include a new ‘modern’ city library, as well as a visual arts space and a performance space or conference centre.

For more on the new cultural hub, see this week’s Galway City Tribune