Can café society rise up and quieten the engines in Navan?
JOHN DONOHOE
It is over 15 years since Michael McDowell as justice minister had great plans for a ‘café society’ in this country as he introduced new licensing laws. While it may be the style in his leafy suburb of Ranelagh on southside Dublin, where the sun probably always shines, it never really took off that much in places like Navan, unless you had a pub with a decent beer garden.
But the last year has caused people to look at things afresh. And observe and consider things more. And new opportunities being presented by the outdoor dining schemes promoted by the Government in response to the pandemic have also opened up new possibilities.
So it is probably time to raise that question again: Is it time to look at the pedestrianisation of Trimgate Street, Navan’s main thoroughfare. Is there any reason why a car should have to come down from the lights at the top of the street, to the Kennedy Road junction? Apart from deliveries to businesses, which can be done at an appointed time, there is no reason why a vehicle shouldn’t use Railway Street and Canon Row, and Kennedy Road itself from the other end.
There are businesses who will say that their customers need to drive down the street to get to their premises. This may be so, but there is no shortage of car parking at the back of the street, on the Fair Green and Kennedy Place, and plenty of interlinking laneways.
Some of those laneways themselves offer huge potential for outdoor activities, such as Cornmarket, which has its coffee shops, and Bakery Lane, currently the site of a residential project new build which will bring more life back to the town centre.
What are the benefits, you ask, of pedestrianising the main street? Just look at a city like Waterford, which was badly hit by the last recession, and the buzz that there is about it now with pedestrianised streets, decent street furniture, nicely laid out seating areas outside pubs and eateries, and historical sculpture trails and buildings.
Would this work in Navan? If everyone was serious about it, it would. Kennedy Place was never envisaged as a car park, it was designed as a town centre plaza where people could meet, socialise, markets could set up, music could be performed. Look at it today – a glorified car park. But that was down to businesses opposing the plaza idea. So why not compromise, and allow the main street become that plaza instead.
If you drive to Dublin city centre, you can’t park outside a shop on Grafton Street, Henry Street or O’Connell Street. You have to park in a designated parking area. Yet we drive right into Navan, and as the late Paddy Fitzsimons said at a town council meeting 25 years ago, we want to practically drive in the door of the shop.
Of course, there would have to be serious policing. Already, a town council seating area that was in place in Metges Lane (a supposedly pedestrian only area, now another car park) had to be removed because of anti-social behaviour there. There have been too many people getting away with such activity for too long around the town, and while that is ongoing, there is not much point in trying to introduce any type of incentives for people to socialise outdoors.
A whole other debate is the proposed traffic managements changes on Ludlow Street and Watergate Street, with many calling for a rethink of the whole idea of bringing buses through the town centre to Kennedy Place – the temporary stop at Abbey Road is working quite well.
Market Square has become quite an example of how a café society in the town could work. Maybe it’s time to take all these engines out of the town centre, and let it breathe!
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