Galway City traders’ groups object to Docks outdoor dining plan

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – A co-ordinated effort has been launched by city centre traders to halt plans for an outdoor dining area at Lough Atalia – they warn that it will take business away from the city centre as the hospitality sector there attempts to emerge from the “catastrophic impact” of Covid-19.

Business owners have suggested the Spanish Arch area as a more viable alternative.

Already, the Latin Quarter, Woodquay Traders and Westend Traders representative groups and four individual businesspeople have objected to a planning application by Galway Harbour to use the former wind turbine storage site and coal yard between the Harbour Hotel and Texaco filling station at Lough Atalia Road.

Drawings submitted with the planning application indicate eight pitches for food trucks or food stalls, as well as parking and a sit-down area for when outdoor dining is permitted under Covid regulations.

“In the interim, the site could operate as a click and collect facility,” the application reads, adding that at 550 metres from Eyre Square, it will “support and encourage additional footfall in the city centre, supporting local business and shops in the city centre area”.

However, the Latin Quarter said there had been no demand from local businesses in support of the planning application – contrary to the justification given in the proposal.

“As an alternative, far more positive urban and economic outcomes might flow from the imaginative use of the existing streetscape and well-defined city centre urban spaces such as the Spanish Arch. These would be far more appropriate locations for such an enterprise, which would allow businesses to synergise rather than compete within the collective effort to instigate an economic rescue for all,” the Latin Quarter objection reads.

The Woodquay Traders group has objected on the grounds that the plans would “take significant business activity away from the already established business of the town centre at a time when they most need it, as we try to emerge from what has been a catastrophic impact for all city centre businesses since March 2020”.

Chairman of the group, John Hughes, said: “The proposal will merely allow people to drive into an unsuitable site in the Lough Atalia/Docks area and have little or no economic benefit to the already hard-hit and struggling businesses of Galway that are trying to get off their knees and back to viability,” the objection reads.
This is a shortened preview version of this article. For more on this story and the objections to the outdoor dining plans, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.