Angry residents say Sandymount Green plan is a 'stupid idea'
Members of Sandymount Business Network, SAMRA, Sandymount Tidy Towns and Residents Marc McGrath, Terrance Pierce, Maxine Pilkington, Joe McCarthy, Lorna Kelly, John O'Neill and Valerie Jennings who are angry with the proposed plans for Sandymount Green
Members of Sandymount Business Network, SAMRA, Sandymount Tidy Towns and Residents Marc McGrath, Terrance Pierce, Maxine Pilkington, Joe McCarthy, Lorna Kelly, John O'Neill and Valerie Jennings who are angry with the proposed plans for Sandymount Green
/
a COUNCIL proposal to redevelop a public green space has been met with widespread objection by residents.
On Tuesday night, Dublin City Council representatives met with residents of Sandymount to present its conservation plan for Sandymount Green.
However, their ideas did not go down well.
The residents expressed concern over a suggested new play space for children and the redevelopment of paths in the historic Sandymount Green.
The majority spoke out against the plans, saying that children in the area "don't want playgrounds" and that the green was already too small.
Solitude
Sandymount Green has been a place of solitude and peace for residents for more than 100 years and was a regular hangout for the poet WB Yeats.
Architect Fergal McNamara of Howley Hayes Architects presented the plan, which proposed a change to the public pathways in the green and the provision of a playground.
The council also outlined the need to straighten up fencing around the green, and a proposal to provide new signage that would give a history of the area.
Valerie Jennings, who runs the local Tidy Towns group, said she was "very disappointed" by the presentation.
She said the proposal to put a playground in the corner of the green was "a bad idea" and would mean making the place even smaller.
The council also proposed placing a tree in the centre of the green, but Ms Jennings said it was "a stupid idea".
"It will make things darker, and the plan to put the tree in the middle and change paths will only divide the area, which people don't want," Ms Jennings said.
Sandymount Residents Association member Lorna Kelly said that the council shouldn't have called the presentation "a plan".
"Because they used the word plan, people will look back in a few years and say oh that was always part of the plan," she said.
"If they just called it a study, it would have removed the uncertainty."
FUTURE
John O'Neill, another resident said that he believed a unqiue idea for the green would be a competition to see which person could come up with the best plan for its future.
"I think that would be a better idea," he said.
"We have been addressing this for years, this isn't even the first meeting we have had like this. They didn't seem to have a plan, and it was interesting to see that it was just a study, after all this time."
Addressing the criticism from several residents about the ideas, the council's head of parks service, Les Moore, said the presentation was "a study" and that "any or all of the proposals" might not actually happen.
Mr Moore said it was "a study of the park, its origins and how it has evolved over a number of years". "It will inform any changes we make into the future," Mr Moore said.
He also added that any works undergone would take place on a phased basis over a number of years "with the agreement of the community".