€50m Ballinasloe Town Centre plan bites the dust

Hopes have been dashed that an ambitious €50 million town centre redevelopment plan for Ballinasloe – including a new Dunnes Stores, multiplex cinema, apartments and riverside walks – will ever get off the ground.

A receiver has been appointed to Harte Holdings (Ballinasloe) Ltd, which had plans to develop the 6.5 acre site off Main Street, with access from River View.

The Cork-based developers were involved in a joint venture with Clancy Construction (Tipperary), which they claimed would have seen up to 400 jobs created during the construction of 40,000 square feet of retail space, as well as apartments.

However, David Swinburne of KPMG was last week appointed as receiver to Harte Holdings by ACC Bank.

The most recent accounts available for the company – where the directors are Patrick Clancy from Tipperary and Barry Harte from Cork – show a deficit in shareholders’ funds of €16.5 million.

The accounts – for the year ended December 2012 and submitted to the Companies Registration Office in July of last year – show losses of almost €1.7m for the year (€5.1m the previous year). Creditors were owed just under €14.9m.

“Since the year-end, the directors have continued to closely monitor the company’s performance and believe that it is appropriate for the financial statements for 2012 to be prepared on a going concern basis. The ability of the company to continue is dependent on the continued support of their bankers,” an auditor’s note reads.

Harte Holdings projected up to 250 full-time and part-time jobs would also be created when the shopping centre was to open.

When planning permission was granted in 2008, Dunnes Stores was widely expected to become the anchor tenant, while there were to be around 20 additional retail units, a “signature” building for a local bank and a multiplex cinema.

The plans also included 60 apartments, a garden centre, landscaped riverside walks, cycle paths and public amenities, as well as more than 320 parking spaces.