Great expectations
Published: 10 November, 2006
Athlone lies in the very centre of Ireland on the banks of the River Shannon. It is the traditional capital of the Irish Midlands, but now a massive town centre development is under way that will enable the town to serve a far wider region, reaching the outskirts of Dublin to the east and Galway to the west.
The project is the brainchild of three local businessmen, John O'Sullivan, Jim Keane and Tom Donohue, operating as Gallico Developments. Last year, they completed the Manor Mills shopping centre in Maynooth.
Athlone Town Centre is going to be the biggest shopping centre to open in Ireland in 2007, with more than 28,000 sq m of new retail space. Analysts predict it will lift the town up to fifth place in the Irish retail hierarchy.
But there's much more to the scheme than just retail: it ticks all the mixed-use boxes with a 161-bedroom four-star hotel and leisure complex of 12 storeys and 163 new tax-incentivised apartments. It will also provide much-needed car parking for the town centre with 1,400 spaces in three underground levels.
The scheme occupies a 3.5 ha site behind the existing main shopping street, Mardyke Street, and will open out onto a new civic square facing the new civic centre.
'Permeability' is a buzzword in planning today, and the scheme has been designed by award-winning architects Murray O'Laoire to encourage pedestrian links between the train and bus station to the north, the shopping core to the south and west, and the civic offices and civic square to the east.
The final design emerged after a drawn-out planning process, dogged by numerous appeals, but it meets all the Planning Board's concerns over the quality of the urban environment and its impact on the surrounding town centre.
The retail element consists of two levels with the upper level accessed from Mardyke Street and the lower level accessed off an east-west covered street running from Gleeson Street to the new civic square. With 11m-wide malls and double-height shopfronts under a lofty glazed roof, the emphasis will be on space and light. The architects' intention is that the scheme should become a new urban quarter in its own right.
Bannon Commercial is letting agent, and associate director Andrew Carberry - an Athlone man himself - has the rare opportunity to contribute to the regeneration of his home town.
"The Golden Island development and the Irishtown area, down by the river, have been massively successful," he says. "But they dragged people and trade away from the traditional town centre. This scheme is about equalising that, bringing business back into the heart of the town."
And he believes Athlone Town Centre has some unique attributes. "It's only 800m from the motorway," he says. "In fact, it's nearer to the N6, which is being upgraded to motorway standard, than Liffey Valley is to the M50."
The motorway from Dublin to Athlone will be completed in 2007 and the Galway section will follow in 2008. This puts Athlone in the unique position of having five exits off the main Dublin - Galway motorway.
There has been some debate over how much the motorway upgrade will extend Athlone's catchment. The developers did their appraisals on the basis of a 420,000 catchment within 40 miles of the centre, but more recent research by Javelin - on behalf of retailers rather than the developers - puts the catchment at 690,000 with a potential spend on core goods reaching ?1.3bn, once the motorway is complete.
"We're not going to stop people going from the Midlands to the M50 ring or Galway," says Carberry. "But if they currently go there five times a year, we only need to convince them to switch two or three of those trips to Athlone to achieve our aims."
Attracted by this growth potential, a strong roster of retailers has signed up already, despite opening day, in October 2007, being a year away.
Marks & Spencer recently announced that it will anchor the upper level of the development with a state-of-the-art 1,128 sq m store, which will be the retailer's first department and grocery store in the Midlands. The other MSUs have gone to Zara with 854 sq m, H&M, Virgin and River Island.
Carberry believes this vindicates the strategy of not targeting a traditional full-line department store as anchor, because collectively, the five MSUs will form a more powerful attraction.
Bannon Commercial says the scheme is now 65 per cent let or subject to serious negotiations. The agents will be using this year's BCSC conference as the springboard for the next big marketing push, looking to secure occupiers for the smaller units. Tommy Hilfiger, New Look and Monsoon/Accessorize have already signed up, consolidating the very strong fashion offer.
Quoting rents are ?2,000 psm zone A, which equates to about ?85 psm overall on the larger units and ?110 psm on the smaller. In addition, remote storage units are being created in the centre's cavernous basements. These are available by separate negotiation but take-up has been brisk, according to Carberry. "It allows the retailers to maximise the use of the retail space they're paying top dollar for," he says, "and it's all part of the process of future-proofing the scheme."
The tight 26-month construction programme is on schedule but it has not been without its challenges. Excavating three basement levels takes construction below the level of the River Shannon, and a complex dewatering system has been installed to deliver a dry site.
And because hotel guests and apartment owners do not expect to look down on a roofscape cluttered with air conditioning plant, the developers have taken an unusual approach to heating and cooling the centre. Boreholes leading 150m down beneath the scheme feed into the groundwater system, meaning that Athlone Town Centre will be the largest structure in Europe to be heated and cooled by groundwater.
The use of pre-cast concrete construction has helped speed up the programme. The first units are on programme to be handed over for fit-out in May 2007.
Athlone Town Centre's fashion emphasis will allow it to complement the existing Golden Island scheme, which has more of a convenience offer. Carberry says: "It's an exceptionally busy centre, ranked number 11 in Ireland."
The 15,000 sq m centre was bought last year by its anchor tenant, Tesco, for ?52m and the retailer is working up plans to develop a 7,500 sq m store on an adjacent site, which would allow its existing 4,000 sq m store to be broken up into more shop units leading off the main mall. The other anchor, Penneys, has just been refurbished and extended, and other tenants include Boots and Thorntons, generating an annual rent roll of ?3m.
Golden Island already attracts five million visitors each year, and the strategy will be to encourage shoppers to walk up to the new scheme via the existing two-level Dunnes store, which has recently been refurbished. To encourage this, Mardyke Street at the front of Dunnes is to be pedestrianised.
This forms part of a wider traffic management scheme for Athlone, with a one-way system circulating round the new centre. The reduction in congestion will allow the council to widen the pavements improving the town's whole shopping environment.
With less than a year to go until its opening, Athlone is poised to take its rightful place in Ireland's retail landscape.
