This is because the former Ballina Town Council offices have been demolished. Here's how the Wester People saw it ...
THE eyesore that has typified Ballina’s lack of community pride for the past 30 years vanished overnight as a demolition crew reduced the former Ballina Town Council offices to rubble as a prelude to a massive redesign programme for the community centre-piece that will be the revamped Market Square.
For 30 years the squat brick structure closed off the plaza-like potential of a magnificent centre-town open-space facility that cried out for imaginative design, reflecting its real potential for urban planning creativity and Ballina’s status. Now that this brick replica of a Shane McGowan dental disaster has been demolished, the real appeal of an evolving Ballina facelift can be revealed.
Last week’s edition of this paper carried extensive details of Ballina Town Council’s plans for the compulsory acquisition of the gaggle of lands flanking the Market Square and gave an overall dimension to the concept of a cobbled square.
The lands targeted by the Council can be utilised as temporary parking lots while the main square is being redesigned in line with the potential of the massive new Penney development that will dominate the eventual complex.
The last 10 years have seen major changes to the Ballina streetscape with the occupation of the new civic offices, a new garda station, the opening of a town-centre library - which will also house the Clarke collection, now expanded to an historical newspaper archive - the proposed Arts Centre and theatre. Then there’s the commencement of the major conversion of the former Savoy Cinema complex into yet another demonstration of the Vincent Ruane transformation process, which has served Ballina so well, in co-operation with the local authority which has also benefitted from the entrepenurial talents of pharmacist, Jim Geraghty, whose new Garden complex has helped transform one of the traditional shopping streets of Ballina.
Ballina will continue to ride the crest of the retail wave in adapting to the absence of major industrial employment and the completion of the Market Square refurbishment as the crowning touch should ensure the town will lose nothing of its traditional shopping appeal - provided, of course, that the control of the rising traffic streams remains a priority issue.
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