Residents want Tesco reject site to become park

Local residents have issued a call for the site of a proposed €15 million supermarket in Rahoon to be rezoned for use as a public park after An Bord Pleanála (ABP) turned down a controversial planning application this week.

Residents in Highfield Park are set to call for the site to be rezoned for ‘amenity’ use after expressing relief that permission for the planned development by former Mayor of Galway Micheal Ó hUiginn had been refused.

ABP turned down permission for the development at the site of a disused timberyard at Rahoon Road, almost 11 months after a full oral hearing took place at a city hotel last year.

The appeals board found that the project’s “excessive scale” would conflict with zoning objectives and the retail strategy for the city – taking away from the “vibrancy and vitality” of the city centre.

Traders body RGDATA joined with local residents from Rahoon Road, Highfield Park, and Maunsells Road, as well as the owners of the nearby Westside Shopping Centre, in opposing the plan.

“Highfield Park Residents’ Association welcome the outcome and are not surprised,” said a spokesman, Ronan MacGearailt. “We are satisfied that the concerns of the local residents have been upheld by this decision.”

He said that residents were now seeking to have the site rezoned, so that a public park for the people of the Westside could be built between Rahoon Road and Seamus Quirke Road.

And a ‘ghost lane’ which was built on the redeveloped Seamus Quirke Road to service the new shopping centre may not now ever be used.

For extensive coverage of the Tesco saga, including reactions from landowner Micheál Ó hUigínn, local residents and small retailers’ group RGDATA, see this week’s Galway City Tribune