Erin O'Brien: Historic Spine

Erin O'Brien: Historic Spine

North Main Street and South Main Street

Erin O’Brien is originally from Nebraska but has lived in Ireland since 1993. She is a planner at the Planning Department at City Hall and she also lives on North Main Street. In this interview, she takes an in-depth look mostly at North Main Street, and details potential ideas for re-development and maintaining the character of the area. She states specifically, that she works in the Planning Department and consults regularly with the Conservation Officer, archaeologists, and Heritage Officer in her efforts to discover what kind of development would best suit different parts of the city. Explaining that she is in charge of looking at the Historical Spine (“Barrack Street to Shandon”) under the City Centre Strategy, she discusses the types of activity and development that a given “zone” will be able to accommodate, stressing that North Main Street does not have the specifications to attract high street retail like St Patrick Street (and that this is a good thing!) The aim, she states, is to promote the development of North Main Street as a kind of bohemian area for a younger crowd. She explains that the demographic (current as of the time of this interview) in the North Main Street area are mostly in their 20s, international in origin, and in the tech sector commuting outside City Centre for work. The struggle, additionally, is to keep businesses alive in the North Main Street area. There is mention of the “Living Above the Shops Scheme” as well as discussion of the knocking down of buildings that had fallen into disuse and that were no longer safe, i.e. “gap sites”. Erin highlights that Cork City Centre has a very high number of independent shops compared to city centres in the UK and elsewhere and that this is one of the charms of the city. The discussion also features a good amount of back and forth between the interviewers and the interviewee with an appreciation for sites like the Old Beamish Brewery (and it’s Christmas Tree) and the former Liberty Pub as well as a general appreciation for the small neighbourhood atmosphere to be found particularly on North Main Street.

03 February 2015

CFP_SR00543_obrien_2015

Cork; Ireland; 2000s

CFP_SR00536_oleary_2015; CFP_SR00537_hanover_2015; CFP_SR00538_spalding_2015; CFP_SR00539_hUigin_2015; CFP_SR00543_obrien_2015; CFP_SR00544_comber_2015; CFP_SR00545_leader_2015; CFP_SR00546_creedon_2015;

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

1.wav File

28 mins 20 secs

City Hall, Cork

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24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

TW: Are you familiar with South Main Street?

EOB: I am. Not as familiar as I am with North.

AB: I lived on South Main Street. I lived over Avesca Funding. We’re still trying to figure out Avesca Funding were. It’s a mystery.

EOB: Is that one of the sites that’s in NAMA now (?). I’m not sure.

AB: I think it is. It is actually, yeah. Do you think that South Main Street would have the same appeal or is there anything there anymore that could be regenerated?

EOB: I think that, actually that’s a good question because right now, you’ve heard about the City Centre Strategy that they’ve put together. We’ve had some consultants who have looked at ideas for the city centre. We’re turning that into an action plan right now. I’m actually tasked with looking at the historic spine from Barrack Street to Shandon so these are things I’ve been thinking about a lot. Getting back to the South Main Street question, we’ve divided it into four sub-areas. South Main Street has its own ting going on and there really isn’t a community there as much as in other places. My hope would be that as the area re-develops, if it’s done well, that forming that basis of community would be part of it too. So maybe there’ll be a new community. I had an architect friend who was saying, not from a religious point of view but just from a community point of view, you kind of think of it as the different medieval parishes along the way and we’ll kind of be re-creating that parish, so to speak, around, I suppose he was saying, around Triskel, St Finbarr’s, the Vision Centre, St Anne’s as you move up the historic spine.

Audio