The closing of the Brewery has handed Kilkenny a golden opportunity that no other city can boast. It has provided Kilkenny with a platform to allow it perform and flourish. When one thinks of ideas for cities these days, they immediately start thinking of modern, urban ideas. They think of designs that are modern, they think of ideas that are modern, they think of a city that's modern. What's modern to a person from Paris, or Berlin, or New York, or Madrid? Modern is all around them, it envelops their lives, they live and breath modern everyday, it doesn't excite them. Will people travel to Kilkenny City to see modern? The answer is no. If people want to see modern, why travel to Kilkenny when you can see it in your own country or big cities such as Dublin, Kilkenny can't compete on this level. Modern is not our calling card. Kilkenny is unique, it's different. No other city is like it. It's beautiful, medieval and in many cases, unchanged and untouched. People travel here for that exact offering. No one can compete with Kilkenny's offering of history and heritage in the same way that Kilkenny can't compete with Dublin when it comes to a modern urban centre. The designs for the Brewery Site need to respect that and it must have a Kilkenny stamp on it, this is essential. In Kilkenny today, very few buildings fail to fit the profile of our city, it should remain this way. As they say, 'Why change a winning formula?'. Yes of course there has to be some level of modernisation to the plans but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't show respect to the rest of the city.
If wrong decisions are made because the money isn’t there, they shouldn’t be made at all. They should be made when the money is there. There is no need to rush in to things. Good ideas don’t just happen.
We hope that this is not the last public consultation and that the vote is postponed. There is not nearly enough time to consider all of the proposals. The decisions will end up being rushed and we will face the CAS fiasco all over again.
We have loads of other ideas for Kilkenny, big and small, please let us know if you’d like to hear them. We didn’t get to include all our ideas in this email. We didn’t realise the deadline was today and as a result, this is what we have written today, but as said above, we hope this isn’t the last public consultation.