Dunnes clash with Galway’s Westside as café row brews

RETAIL group Dunnes Stores has clashed with the owners of a Galway shopping centre where it is the anchor tenant.

Plans at the Westside Shopping Centre for a ‘free-standing café’ to keep the centre “relevant to today’s consumers” have drawn several objections from tenants at the mall.

It is owned by investment vehicle Hurley Property ICAV, which owns several shopping centres around the country.

The Westside Shopping Centre itself went on the market in October with a guide price of €9.6m.

The crux of the row is the fact that this new development would take up car spaces, with Dunnes now launching an appeal with An Bord Pleanala after the plan for the new cafe was given conditional permission.

Dunnes, which is headed by Margaret Heffernan, raised concerns about traffic, parking spaces and “a significant adverse visual impact” caused by the development.

It claimed around 10pc of parking spaces would be lost which is described as “unacceptable’”

Nine other businesses objected in a submission from O’Donnellan & Co Architects, including a pharmacy and a Chinese restaurant.

They noted that there were already three outlets serving food in the centres including McDonald’s, O’Hehir’s Bakery and, of course, the Chinese.

“The addition of another food outlet would significantly reduce the ability of the existing food outlets to trade profitably,” said the submission, which also claimed that car parking spaces are already in high demand.