Work to finish Fairgreen coach station development resumes

City councillors have been assured that work is continuing to finish the private coach station and overhead apartments at the Fairgreen.

The development, known as the Seán Duggan Centre, was taken over in 2014 by Michael Maye and Jason Williams through their Connaught and Whitehall Capital UK Ltd investment company for a figure believed to be in the region of €4.5 million.

At a local authority meeting last week, City Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath said the new developers will adhere to the original planning permission conditions which require the provision of a completed coach station and a mixed development which will include offices and apartments.

The foundation has already been laid for the completion of five new bus bays which will add to the existing bus bays at the Fairgreen private coach station.

Mr McGrath assured councillors that the new developer had started to continue the building project after buying it from NAMA.

It is now a three-way partnership with the developer – who was not named at Monday’s meeting – Enterprise Ireland and the City Council, who own the site and who will grant a 999-year lease on the site to the developer once all elements of the project are complete.

Concerns were voiced among councillors last week that the apartments hadn’t yet been built and Cllr Donal Lyons said he was disappointed that it hadn’t materialised as an IT hub to provide much-needed jobs for the city.

Cllr Catherine Connolly, too, was disappointed and worried that the conditions laid down in the handing over of the site weren’t being adhered to, namely, the provision of social housing units.

But Eileen Ruane, Director of Services in Economic Development, Community, Culture, Corporate Services and Human Resources, assured the meeting that the planning permission was still in place with the same conditions and that the work was ongoing.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.