‘Significant progress’ made on Cork Events Centre

A CITY Hall official has said that “significant progress” has been made regarding the Cork Events Centre.

In response to a question posed by Independent councillor Thomas Moloney, who has requested an update on the long-awaited project, City Hall’s head of finance John Hallahan said both the promoters and developers of the events centre are continuing to engage with Cork City Council.

“Currently BAM and Live Nation are continuing their engagement with Cork City Council and talks have been held with a view to agree the final details of the terms of the public funding.

“Significant progress has been made in the work required to reach final agreement,” he said.

The project faced a legal challenge earlier this year put forward by Gleneagle Hotel (Killarney) Ltd, who also run the INEC Killarney, but this was withdrawn in April.

Speaking to The Echo at the time, Fianna Fáil councillor and former Lord Mayor John Sheehan said that Cork city councillors weren’t certain as to why the case was withdrawn as it was due to go ahead, but he said it’s good news for Cork.

“That’s the last obstacle in theory to the events centre, in the sense that it now has planning, there’s no legal challenge, the funding has been promised by the Government and they can now go ahead and sign a contract with the joint purpose vehicle that’s been set up with Live Nation (promoters) and BAM (developers) to proceed with it,” he said.

“These are very uncertain times.

“It’s going to be two years at least before the events centre is built.

“It may be a different environment by the time this is all over, but it is good news.”

The Cork Events Centre project was originally to receive approximately €14m in state aid but that has later risen to a total package of €50m.

The 6,000-seater event centre is due to be built on the site of the former Beamish & Crawford brewery on South Main Street.

The sod was turned in February 2016 by then Taoiseach Enda Kenny but the project has mired in controversy for some time due to lack of progress on the site.

In recent months there were also concerns that Live Nation may have been considering pulling out of the project due to the impact of Covid-19.