A New Year’s Resolution For Arklow

A New Year’s Resolution For Arklow 

The hard truth facing the main street. It's basically dead.

The end of the year is always the time where people decide what they want to achieve in the next 12 months. To take stock of where they are going, and where they've been. I set up this blog 6 months ago as a way to promote Arklow to the outside world, to show them all the positives about the town and that even with all the doom and gloom that seems almost constant in the media, there are good people here that are trying their hardest to aid our recovery. Whether it be businesses, new sports clubs, museums or art societies we have a community of great people that deserve to be represented.

But Arklow is far from perfect, and over the last month I took a hard look at just how bad things were. And to be honest the one thing about Arklow that desperately needs improvement is it's Main Street. Let's be honest, it's dead. People like to blame The Bridgewater Shopping Centre for taking away all the footfall of the Main Street, but do you honestly believe that if that centre wasn't there that the situation would be any different? We'd have an even bigger unemployment problem (The centre is currently one of the biggest employers in Wicklow) and Arklow would be just another black hole of a town that people couldn't wait to escape for the big city. People use the shopping centre as an excuse when it should be seen as an opportunity to bring people to the main street.

An all to familiar site at the moment

If you walk down the Main Street, you know exactly what  mean. We are constantly told the benefits of what happens when you shop local, about how it keeps money in the local community. But there are so few shops left that it feels sometimes that there is actually no point going there at all. And believe me, I had to resort to using maths to asses the situation. I walked from the top of the Main Street to the bottom and counted every single building (143) and then ignored every building that was a house or a place of residence which left 127 buildings that could be used for a shop. and out of those 127 buildings, 43 are empty and have been empty for a long time. So roughly one third of the shops are closed, which doesn't sound too horrifying. But some of these units are absolutely huge, the biggest being the old Ormonde Cinema site, and the Alps behind it.

 The Alps site is approximately 6.75 acres that is absolutely going to waste. It's a golden opportunity to inject some sort of spark into the Main Street and the town as a whole, and it's just sitting there falling apart. A google search leaves a long and confusing history of what it was going to be, but that doesn't really matter because at the moment it's a big chunk of nothing. A while back I asked people on the Arklow Online Facebook Page if they could have any store on the Main Street what would it be. 

The answer? Penneys, and by an overwhelming margin. So I did the most sensible thing I could think of. I e-mailed Penneys and asked if in the past they had or currently have any plans to build in Arklow. And the answer was pretty much what I expected, and from the e-mail itself  " we are not aware of any immediate or current plans to open in your area at this time". Disappointing, but what can you expect when there is 6.75 acres of land hanging around and it's almost impossible to find out whats going on with it? I mean I live in the town and I don't know whats happening with it, so what is someone who want to do business in Arklow supposed to do? 

The problem facing the Main Street is a vicious circle, big businesses (or businesses of any kind) don't want to operate on the Main Street because there's no footfall, and there's no footfall because people feel like there's nothing on the Main Street. But I would bet my life that if that Alps site was put to good use and a big player was invited to open a flagship store in Arklow, the footfall would go through the roof and into outer space. But the sad truth is nobody wants to take that risk, and as a result the Main Street is rotting, a hollow shell of what it once was a long time ago.

So what could Arklows New Years resolution be? Maybe just to start a discussion. A conversation about who owns all these buildings and empty spaces, and how exactly we can better utilize them. How we can get the ball rolling and jump start Arklows revival. And in one years time who knows what the outcome will be? But I know there are people here that don't want the town to die a sad, prolonged death, and I have faith in them that 2017 might not be the end of Arklow, but the start.