New plan to turn town park into sports/activity centre

IT is likely to be well into the New Year before Kerry County Council makes a decision on granting planning permission for a project that would effectively turn Dingle town park into a sports/ activity centre.

A history of anti-social behaviour has given the town park a bad name and even the frequently vandalised children’s playground that was located there became redundant after a parents’ group, operating under the company name of Am Spraoi, succeeded in getting a new playground built near Cooleen last year.

The loss of the playground took away the town park’s remaining community use - apart from very popular family events during Féile na Bealtaine and the Food Festival – and left a question over its future. Earlier this year a plan to build an all-weather sports pitch in a section of the park was mooted and this subsequently evolved into a plan to re-develop the entire park as a sports/activity area.

In October the Am Spraoi group, with reconstituted membership but still under the chairmanship of Cllr Seamus Cosaí Fitzgerald, applied to Kerry County Council for planning permission to construct a new all-weather playing pitch, sprint lanes, a new tennis court, boundary fences, flood lighting, a 300m jogging track with eight outdoor exercise stations, and a single storey building with changing rooms, toilets, showers, a fitness suite and a managers office.

Mary and Gearóidín Farrell, who own the Corner House on Dykegate Lane which backs onto the town park, have lodged several concerns at the development, including that it “may not by financially viable in which case there is a risk that in a few years’ time Dingle will be faced with abandoned, derelict buildings and increased problems with anti-social behaviour and nuisance.”

They also express concern that the development would create even greater parking problems in surrounding areas and that “its expressly commercial nature and large scale will detract and fundamentally change the current designated primary uses as passive and/or open space/amenity.

Cllr Fitzgerald said he doesn’t expect a decision on the application for several months and that, if planning permission is granted, the development would probably be carried out in phases depending on the availability of funding.