Market Square Part 8 'ready for publication'
 |
| Some visual waypoints on the journey so far towards the Market Square Redevelopment. |
The Part 8 documents for the Market Square Redevelopment project have been completed by Kildare County Council and will be published before the end of the month, writes Brian Byrne.
This is one of the items in the Management Report for January 2021 from the local authority's Chief Executive, Peter Carey.
The project is now estimated to cost €1.3m, of which €1.1m is expected to be provided out of the Council's LPT funds. According to the Council's Strategic Projects & Public Realm Team, the timeline for completion of the project is Quarter 2 2022, 'subject to funding'.
The Market Square redevelopment project got under way after a public meeting organised by Kilcullen Community Action in July 2017. A public consultation day in September of the same year garnered 217 submissions on the day and afterwards online.
A Concept Plan produced by the Paul Hogarth Company on commission from Kildare County Council was shown to the project committee in April 2018. That plan was then shown to councillors of the Naas MD in June of that year. Following an application supported by Kildare County Council, the redevelopment project was awarded an initial €200,000 from the Town and Village Renewal Scheme 2018 towards the then estimated cost of €500,000.
In April 2019, in response to concerns on parking raised by businesses, KCA said it had been told by the Council that Part 8 plans and documentation had 'largely been completed' and 'planning reports' should be completed by the end of that month. The KCA statement also said its Market Square Committee was, in conjunction with the Council, 'looking at allocating parking spaces nearby'.
In May of 2019, the Council had surveys of parking spaces in the downtown Kilcullen area carried out, along with relevant traffic counts.
A full public consultation period under the Part 8 process was originally expected before Christmas 2019, but was again deferred, pending completion of the documents. The pandemic situation in 2020 resulted in further deferrals.
A similar project planned for Rathangan, costing €1.6m, is also expected to be published by the end of the month.
