Why did we give up on pedestrianising S William Street?
Post-Covid there seemed to be a real push to make city centre more pedestrian friendly. This was overwhelmingly backed by the public and supported by successful trials. Cork City actually made great strides in this regard.
The only major pushback here was from Brown Thomas relating to their carpark, simply because they were asked to reroute their entry. Their sole claim against was this would lower their revenue (without actual evidence), which is not legally protected. Following negative backlash to this, they have conveniently renamed the carpark to remove “Brown Thomas”.
DCC seem to have completely thrown in the towel here without much of a fight, and notwithstanding the fact they have the power to mandate Brown Thomas to reroute the carpark. They’ve caved to a private interest over the greater good, without any real justification.
My question is why are we allowing a private carpark to rule over city policy and to override democracy? I can think of any other European city that would allow this carry on. Dublin is crying out for better public space, and we need to bring this back into the conversation.
Correction: The carpark licensed the Brown Thomas name, and is not owned by BT itself.