Council agrees to buy eyesore Tullamore site
Five years after calls were made for the demolition of a long-standing derelict building in Tullamore, Offaly County Council has completed the purchase of the premises formerly known as the Bridge Garage on William Street.
The purchase is being hailed as a major breakthrough for the local authority in its ongoing battle to acquire derelict sites in the county town, and could result in a prime development site coming on stream in the centre of the town over the coming months.
The deed of transfer for the purchase of the former Bridge Garage, which was owned and operated for over two decades by the late Dick Conroy, was signed and sealed in recent weeks, and Cathaoirleach of Offaly County Council, Cllr John Leahy, hopes that the purchase will be “the first of many” derelict sites to be brought into council ownership.
“We have over 35 derelict sites in Tullamore alone, which is far too many, so we are adopting a very pro-active approach and are very much driving the agenda to bring these sites back into use,” said Cllr Leahy.
Offaly County Council has secured €2m from the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) to specifically address vacancy and dereliction in Tullamore town, and Cllr Leahy said it was the intention of the elected representatives and the council executive to "work together to tackle this issue head on".
The council has erected notices on numerous vacant buildings around the centre of Tullamore in recent weeks, signalling its intention to begin the process of acquiring them by way of Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) in cases where ownership cannot be established.
"This signals our pro-active approach to this issue," said Cllr Leahy. "In fairness, members of the public have been driving this agenda as they are coming to us as elected members and asking us what is happening with particular buildings around the town which have been derelict for years, and it’s then up to us to drive this forward at council level, and that’s what we are doing."
The former Bridge Garage was listed as being a protected structure in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH), but members of Offaly County Council were successful in their bid to have it removed from the register during their discusssions on the draft Offaly County Development Plan for 2021-2027.
During discusssions on the draft plan for county Offaly in June 2021, a number of elected members of the council – including Fianna Fail’s Cllr Declan Harvey, Cllr Sean O’Brien (Independent) and the-then Cllr Tony McCormack – all called for its removal from the list of protected structures.
Cllr Harvey, who told the 2021 meeting that the late Dick Conroy was his uncle, said he had "no personal interest" in the Bridge Garage building, but he described the structure as "dangerous" and said it was "falling down" and should be demolished.
Cllr Sean O’Brien said if elected members were looking at "the future of the town" they could not continue to maintain premises such as the Bridge Garage which he added "don’t really have any architectural value."
Offaly TD, Deputy Tony McCormack, who was a Fianna Fail councillor in 2021, said it would be "ridiculous" to retain its listing, and described the derelict site as "an eyesore" and "an absolute disgrace" and said it would "lie there derelict for ever and ever" unless it was taken off the protected structures list.
The building which was occupied by the former Bridge Garage was originally built around 1850, but was altered in the early 1950s, according to details provided in its listing on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, which also added that "small-scale urban garage and mechanics are now under threat from generic multi-national forecourts."