Shop Fronts in Limerick City

A walk up William Street will make it clear to anyone that Mayor John Moran and Limerick Council have no particular appetite to improve shop fronts in the city. William Street might be the worst case but no other street in the city centre is far behind.

The reality is quite at odds with the official position, however. The Council has an impressive Shopfront Design Guidlines now and its current Development Plan indicates that it has a strong sense of why this is an important issue:

While the above excerpts are a flavour of what the Council says it wants to achieve with shop fronts, these requirements only apply when the owner of the unit is seeking planning permission. Alarmingly, there seems to have been only five planning applications for alterations to shop fronts in the city centre in the last five years. That suggests that many retailers have simply not applied for planning permission. This is one area that the Council should investigate further. It might also consider beefing up its enforcement section, which, as I understand it, has just two people working in it. By contrast,Tipperary has eight. A much bigger team is needed in Limerick.

Even if retailers did engage with the planning process when installing or modifying their shop front, that would only account for a very small percentage of the total number of shop fronts that need to be overhauled. There's no other way to fix the problem than having appropriate incentives. Right now those incentives are pretty measly.

A grand total of €15,000 has been made available by the Mayor and the Council for the city centre. Individual retailers can apply for up to €1,000 of this fund. You're not going to do much to a shop front with that kind of money beyond a lick of paint. This pittance isn't even coming from the Mayor's or the Council's own revenues. It's funding from central government via the Department of Housing. Retailers in Limerick must be wondering where the rates they're paying to the local authority are going. Surely the rates regime could be tweaked to make it worth retailers while to upgrade their shop fronts? The Mayor, who campaigned on creating an attractive and liveable city centre, can surely come up with a better solution than simply repackaging what every other county in Ireland is doing.

I'll finish on a positive note. Despite the ground floor of Studio Saol's premises on the corner of Henry Street and Sarsfield Street (formerly Billy Higgins Menswear) being vacant until they have refurbished the building they have done a fine job on the old shop front recently. Let's hope it inspires others to meet that standard.

Below is a mid twentieth century photo of William Street, as well as a series of "then and now" photos of particular shop fronts on the street.