Sisk’s latest plan for construction at Greystones Harbour — it's to start next week. Or is it?
For the first time since the harbour project began back in late 2007, the Agenda for the Greystones Municipal Council meeting this evening (Tuesday 29 July) does not include the harbour as an item on the agenda.
Is it because the entire board of Sisk is on holidays? Or Mr Sean Quirke, the WCC director of services in charge of the project?
And if so, is either of these reasons enough to stop councillors from discussing the continued lack of progress at the harbour and the latest of Sisk’s broken promises?
Strangely enough, just recently GUBOH has come into possession of an interesting document prepared on the instructions of the Sisk group for the company’s architects.
This is Sisk’s new scheme for building the housing and other elements at the harbour, initially promised for “the second quarter” of 2014 — now just about elapsed with no sign of any activity — and later shifted to “later in 2014”.
One thing odd about this comprehensive plan is that it has a start date, and that date is soon.
The start date for Sisk’s new construction plan is 5 August 2014 — next Tuesday, one week after the Municipal Council meets without the harbour on its agenda.
Is this a coincidence, or is it the actual reason that the harbour has been omitted as an item on the council agenda for the first time in seven years?
No doubt councillors will want an answer to that question tonight.
The photo attached shows the first page of the document to show a start date, page 12. We have included the full document in our files, both on our website and Facebook page.
But councillors will need to ask a lot more questions to get to the bottom of the many issues raised by this scheduling document, which seems, to say the least of it, a little optimistic about the start date, seeing as none of the preparatory site work usually essential before beginning a project of this magnitude has been done, and there has been no sign of any staff moving onto the site.
The first such issue is the proposed construction period.
This is 61 months, or FIVE years and one month.
If the work did start on 5 August 2014, and all went to plan, then the build would not be be complete until September/October 2019.
Let’s just recall that Sisk have been blighting Greystones with their presence since 7 August 2007 when Bord Pleanala finally approved their project. That’s two days short of seven years on their supposed start date next week.
Or 84 months. Add 61, and you get 145 months, or a total of 12 years and three months.
The original schedule from start to finish of the project was to be 52 months, or four years and four months. It should have been finished entirely in March or April 2012.
So if they did start next Tuesday, we could expect to have Sisk in Greystones for close on three times the original planned period — 2.8 times longer, to be exact.
Well, on the one hand a start would be very welcome. But the timescale is absurd — five whole years and one month to build 375 dwellings and 6,245 sq m of commercial space!
The second issue is: what happens to the site during this five year-plus period?
We’ve already had Sisk here for seven years.
At every turn, they have refused and resisted every proposal — every reasonable proposal — for a comprehensive approach to remedying the desolate and ugly character of the site while the community waits for them to get their finger out.
They resisted taking down the hoardings that gave GUBOH its name and raison d’etre
They resisted opening the south harbour to the public until the pressure from GUBOH became too much for them
They resisted any measure to put some lipstick on their ugly gorilla to help the businesses whose trade was stricken due to the repulsiveness of the site and the disgraceful state of the last stretch of the Cliff Walk from Bray
They refused to continue discussions with Stephen Donnelly TD and Cllr Tom Fortune last December, when their tame councillors sabotaged efforts to get everyone around a table under the auspices of the old Town Council — discussions which might have led to progress acceptable to the community and a solution in place for this summer, now halfway through
And they refused to spend the negligible sum of €300,000 to implement the Greystones Harbour Community Plan — a drop in the bucket when set against the let-off of €30 million in public money given to them by NAMA and the €17 million worth of land removed from the proposed public park and handed to them for nothing by Wicklow County Council
It is high time that the Municipal Council says STOP to all this!
It is high time that the Municipal Council says to Sisk:
You have one opportunity to mend your fences with the Greystones community.
Sit down with this council, with the community groups having an interest in the harbour, with the sponsors of the Community Plan, and make a deal to implement it.
Let’s be clear — once again — because some of the usual suspects have been stirring up the mud and pretending that the Community Plan would obstruct completion of the project.
The Community Plan is not set in stone. Much of it is negotiable.
More to the point, it is flexible. Every measure in it can be coordinated with any possible phasing of the remaining build-out.
The key words are phasing and coordination, and all that is needed for these is for Sisk to give up its dog-in-the-manger attitude, take down the two fingers it has been holding up to us for seven years now, and engage in a constructive manner to get a solution which will satisfy its construction requirements and at the same time satisfy the needs of the community.
One thing is sure. If Sisk do not do this, there will be further delay and this entire project will stretch out to the early 2020s — if it is ever completed at all.
Because what is contained in Sisk’s new construction schedule, however fanciful its start date, is not entirely covered by existing planning approval.
That means further planning applications to WCC. Inevitably, these will be objected to and appealed to Bord Pleanala with a minimum further delay of two years.
Given the feelings in the community against Sisk and its behaviour, these objections will be many.
Changes may, and almost certainly will, require a new Environmental Impact Assessment, under rules somewhat different from when the last was carried out, with further possibility for objection and delay.
Does Greystones Municipal Council want that?
The answer, in all cases, must be NO.
GUBOH certainly does not want it — our attitude is that the sooner Sisk start, finish it, and are gone the hell out of Greystones, the better it will be for the community which has suffered their arrival and presence for seven years already.
So, surely the solution is obvious?
The Municipal Council must tell Sisk one thing — if you want this community’s cooperation, and if you don’t want mass objections to any new planning applications or requests for variations — IMPLEMENT THE COMMUNITY PLAN, and do it now.
