Waterford: Community, council and State working together to fix dereliction in Cappoquin, Tramore and Tallow
The Which John House Feerick, Mccarthy, Blackwater (left And Pany Flynn, Cappoquin Renovated Members To Regenerationm Dan Ollie Recently Prendergast, John Tom Been Denis Outside Picture: Wilkinson Right) Has Of Linehan Mcgrath Anthony
If you want to sort out dereliction, you could talk to people in Cappoquin.
With a population of little more than 700, you wouldn’t think they’d be capable of getting the guts of €6m in State aid to buy up and develop a small estate of derelict properties.
But, since 2018 — when Cappoquin became a pilot town under the Government’s Town Centre Living Initiative — and the launch of the Cappoquin Regeneration Company, that is exactly what has happened.
When the visited in 2021 for its focus on dereliction, there were three listed and protected buildings on Main St that needed to be restored — the long-vacant Moore’s Hotel, Fennell’s Pub, and the former Uniacke’s shop.
There were also three houses on Upper Main St that badly needed attention.
Covid delayed things but work is due to begin, with the properties all finally having got planning permission.
Numbers 6, 7 and 8 Upper Main St will be fully renovated and restored as residential properties and then sold on the open market, with the proceeds of the sales going back into buying more property to do up and sell.
Moore’s Hotel, Fennells and Uniacke’s shop will also be renovated and restored but the community behind the initiative plan to hang on to the properties and lease them out to businesses.
Also at the time of the last focus on dereliction in the village, Blackwater House was being restored, and that has now been completed.
Former Waterford county manager Denis McCarthy, one of the three directors of the Cappoquin Regeneration Company, said: “Work was affected by covid, but that is now office-ready and good to go.
“Our original plan was that it should be some sort of office hub, but covid and the popularity of working from home has changed that, and so we are moving slightly away from the idea of the building being just an office hub.
“The current postmaster in the village is retiring, so locating the post office in the property might be an option.
“But the fact that the building is ready is proof our system works. It has been a long road but it is working, and we are very proud of what we have done and what we are doing.
“None of this would be possible if the community, the local council and the State hadn’t worked together.
“It also helps that the village has had a vision of what it wants to do and it had a lot of groundwork done before things started to happen in 2018.”
It was no accident that the Rural and Community Development Minister, Heather Humphreys, announced €115m Rural Regeneration and Development Fund funding for 23 landmark rural regeneration projects across Ireland in the village last November.
One of funding allocations she announced was the €5m needed to develop Moore’s Hotel, Fennells and Uniacke’s shop as part of the Cappoquin Regeneration Project.
At the other end of the county, in Tramore, things are looking up for a different reason: money.
The seaside town has become a very popular place to live and as a result, prices are now higher than they are in Waterford city, 15 minutes' drive away and developers are snapping up derelict and vacant sites.
A sign of the times was the sale in February of a 1920s bungalow for, according to the Residential Property Price Register, €1.7m.
The fact that Fiddaun Cottage, on Doneraile Drive, was renovated and refurbished on TV by Dermot Bannon in 2019 may well have contributed to its high sale.
But elsewhere in the town, significant properties are also changing hands.
The biggest issue affecting the people of Tramore in 2021 as far as dereliction was concerned was the landmark Grand Hotel.
The large hotel, which was built in the 1700s and is one of Ireland’s oldest hotels, has been empty ever since it was sold to Chinese businessman Guoqing Wu in 2014.
A derelict sites notice was issued in 2018 and the council had been trying to engage with Mr Wu about the building, with little success.
Described by a local businesswoman as “the elephant in the room” (in the town) in our 2021 piece, things have changed a bit and now all eyes are on it but in a more positive way.
This is because the hotel, which was put up for sale for €2m last August through Sherry Fitzgerald John Rohan, has been bought by Waterford developer, James Frisby.
The purchase was reported by WLR FM and confirmed by his father Noel in a text message to the local radio station earlier in January.
Mr Frisby said his son hopes to turn the Grand into a hotel with 100-plus rooms.
Mr Rohan has been involved in a lot of other notable sales of derelict properties in recent months in the picturesque seaside town.
They include the former Tramore Hotel on Strand Street, which was destroyed by fire in 2018.
For years, little more than walls with weeds growing out of the top of them, it was sold to developers in the first week in July.
The developers are going to demolish what is left of the building and build apartments and townhouses.
“Things are really moving in Tramore,” Mr Rohan said.
“I can see the end of dereliction in sight, I really can.
“Property prices are now higher than in Waterford because Tramore has become a really popular place to live."
County councillor and former mayor Lola O’Sullivan said: "It has been a long time since I have seen such a movement.
“A lot of people who lived away have moved back or want to move back.
“There is property moving in Tramore and it is moving very fast.
“It’s a great place to work from home, it’s a great place to bring up children, it’s only about an hour and a half from Dublin.”
Kilmacthomas is not quite basking in the same glow of success against dereliction as they would have hoped.
But things are at least starting to change for the better since 2021.
Ger Cusack, chairman of the Kilmacthomas Voluntary Social Enterprise Group, said: “A number of buildings have come into use that were not in use before.
“There has been some change for the better since 2021 but not major change.
“Some privately owned properties on the Main Street that were vacant then are now occupied but we still have three significant buildings that are vacant.”
Read More
Back in 2021, one of Kilmacthomas’s most notable vacant properties was the old railway station, which had planning permission in place to construct a distillery on the site.
It has since been restored to “a limited degree”, in that it has been weatherproofed and re-roofed and doors and windows have been replaced.
But although there has been talk of it being turned into a museum, it has yet to be brought into use.
The derelict Woollen Mills building, dating back to the 1850s, just off Main Street, is still derelict.
Planning permission had been approved in 2020 to construct a distillery on the site.
It is understood this plan for the site will not now go ahead.
The former David Lynne bar, which also featured in the Irish Examiner’s 2021 focus on dereliction and vacancy in Munster, is still empty, but there is a rumour that it has been bought.
When former Tallow Mayor Sean Tobin spoke to the , one of the derelict buildings in the town that was due to have work done on it was the old Bride Valley Stores building.
Amounting to little more than stone walls with grass growing out of them, the large stone building — dating back to the 1700s — has been derelict for over 20 years.
It is one of around 60 that have either had a makeover or are due to have one in the small west Waterford town.
Waterford City and County Council managed to secure €100,000 Streetscape Enhancement Measure (SEM) funding for projects in Tallow through the Department of Rural and Community Development’s Town and Village Renewal Scheme.
“Tallow has been transformed in the past three months,” said Mr Tobin, who is chair of the Tallow Enterprise Centre and one of the main catalysts for change in the town.
“Most of the properties along the main thoroughfare into town have been given a facelift, including the derelict buildings.
“This is not a case of us painting windows and doors onto derelict buildings as you see in some towns.
“This is us actually cleaning them up, re-plastering them and fitting in new doors and windows and changing wiring.”
But it is not just tidying up the derelict and vacant shops or houses, the town is also seeing properties being snapped up by developers.
In the past two years, a group of three houses that had been derelict for 30 years have been done up and now have people living in them.
They include Gertie Ronan’s former shop, which had been empty for around 50 years, opened as a coffee shop about six months ago.
Jackie Ryan’s former butcher’s shop, next door, has now been renovated and turned into a residential property.
“If you approached the town from the south, it was dull and grey about 12 months ago,” he said.
“But now, with the facelift, the place is totally transformed.
“It reminds me of the old days of the Corpus Christi processions through the town — everything is just gleaming.”
His tip for other towns trying to fight vacancy and dereliction is a simple one.
“As soon as you realise tackling vacancy on your doorstep is a complex issue that takes time to sort out, you need to get all the players playing together,” he said.
“We would not be able to improve Tallow if it weren’t for the council, the State and the community all working together.
“Just going around saying there is a problem is not enough. It does not solve anything.”
According to the 2022 census, Munster’s smallest county recorded the largest increase in its population since the last census in 2016. Currently at 127,363, this is up 9.6% or 11,187.
With a total housing stock of 55,159, according to the CSO, Waterford has a vacancy rate of 7.1% based on its estimated 3,916 vacant dwellings.
The vacancy rate would be higher if the country’s 2,126 unoccupied holiday homes were taken into consideration. Of its vacant dwellings, 875 were classed as rentals and 446 were vacant dwellings for sale.
Its commercial vacancy rates were, in the GeoDirectory Commercial Buildings Report Q4 2022, given as 14.3%, up from 13.9% the year before.
In its Residential Buildings Report for Q2 2023, GeoDirectory said there were a total of 551 new addresses added to Waterford’s housing stock by December 2022, up 1% on the previous year.
Added to that, the number of buildings under construction was 593 in the last quarter of 2022, and 538 residential commencement notices — where the local authority is notified of an intention to develop or extend a property — were submitted.
There are currently 37 properties on Waterford County Council’s Derelict Sites Register and 16 sites on the Vacant Sites Register.
This is three less than the number in July/August 2021, and the council is in the process of removing “a number of sites” from the vacant sites register.
Since July/August 2021, it has also issued four Compulsory Purchase Orders.
Although there are around 100 so-called voids on the council’s books, it says it has renovated and brought back into use some 209 short-term units and 20 long-term units.