TRALEE Chamber is to set out clear actions to tackle vacancy of commercial buildings in the town.
The Chamber is presenting a roadmap to rebuilding Tralee, in a detailed submission to address the problem in the town centre.
The report which will be issued as a series of discussion points over the coming five weeks, will outline a clear set of actions to be undertaken locally to tackle vacancy, and to re-build business in the capital town.
“Vacancy in Tralee is now at a tipping point, and for far too long we all have talked about the demise of the town centre, without having a clear plan on how to address it,” said Ken Tobin of Tralee Chamber.
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“With 19% of the properties vacant in Tralee we need a set of clear actions, that we can do at a local level, that will finally seek to address the situation. Over the coming five weeks we will be issuing two proposals a week from our overall report to address vacancy.”
The report which will be made available for discussion, outlines in total ten actionable solutions to addressing vacancy in Tralee.
Speaking about the report, Sinn Féin TD Pa Daly said; “The full report is excellent, over the past number of weeks I have engaged with Tralee Chamber to review the ten proposals outlined in detail. In particular there are key realistic initiatives outlined that will support people living in the town centre again.”
The report identifies a clear pathway to ensure that commercial properties that are purposely left vacant and idle for a continued period of time will pay full rates, until such a time as they are brought back into use.
We must also, in my view, prioritise attracting public sector jobs to the Denny Site and the town centre. Studies in Britain have shown that keeping jobs in the town centres is vital to keeping them vibrant. The recent announcement by Ulster bank has made this more of a priority than ever.”
President of Tralee Chamber, Kevin McCarthy said; “The time for inaction on town centre vacancy has passed. The full report is based on factual information collected over the past number of months. By releasing the report over a number of weeks we are looking to start a collective conversation, and will be working with all the stakeholders, public representatives and businesses of the town to finally solve this problem and support the re-emergence of our town.
We have already begun discussions with our public representatives seeking support for the measures needed for Tralee, and we look forward to engaging with all public representatives and stakeholders over the coming weeks”.
The report entitled ‘1 in 5: Addressing Commercial Vacancy in Tralee’ conclusively maps out all vacant properties in Tralee, including upper levels, and details that almost one in five (19%) of all property in the town centre lay idle as of October 2020. This includes 19% of all First-Floor property being vacant, and 23% of all Ground-Floor Property being vacant at the time of the surveys.
The report is a follow up to previous submission Tralee Chamber has made in relation to the National Development Plan and the County Development Plan and comes three years to the day since first making a submission on the Tralee Local Area Plans.
The ten topics of the report seek to identify local based actions that can be taken to address the vacancy levels in Tralee, and critically that are not reliant on National Policy and Plans that are coming in time, but which will be supportive of the actions that need to be taken locally.
Ken Tobin says; “Over the past number of months we have engaged extensively on the national Town Centre First, Living City and Regional development policies. All of these will take time to trickle down to Tralee. Our report parks all of those and looks at what we can actually do right now in Tralee.”