Nostalgia: The making of Mahon Point Shopping Centre

WHEN Mahon Point Shopping Centre — then styled ‘MahonPoint’ —opened 20 years ago, it was front page news, with the Evening Echo carrying the headline “It’s open”.

“A UCC student was the first person through the door of the €230m MahonPoint shopping centre today,” began our February 1, 2005, story by Ann Murphy.

“Michael Noonan (24) from Derrynane Road, Turner’s Cross, was selected from six winners of an Evening Echo promotion to win €500 vouchers to spend in the centre.

“He was followed by two local women — Caroline and Lena Qulligan — who had queued among thousands to get in to see the hugely anticipated centre — the largest of its kind outside of Dublin.”

Inside the paper, our editorial declared: “Mahon Point, which opened today, is the biggest thing to happen to Cork since the Jack Lynch Tunnel”.

Within minutes of the centre’s 10.30am opening, with the Cork City Jazz Band still gearing up to entertain visitors, the first purchases had been made, with “huge numbers of shoppers” heading straight for Debenhams, which, alongside Tesco, were the new centre’s anchors.

Other shops included Zara, Next, Pamela Scott, Principals, Gasoline, Oasis, Monsoon, Lacoste, French Connection, and Easons. The centre also boasted attractions such as three restaurants, a six-outlet foodcourt, an 11-screen multiplex cinema, and “the country’s biggest O’Brien’s Sandwich Bar, which has capacity for 265 diners”.

Developer Owen O’Callaghan mingled with the customers, who were welcomed with wine and champagne, and he described it as a great day for Mahon and its people who, he said, had been very supportive of the development. Mr O’Callaghan added that the new shopping centre would bring 1,800 jobs to Mahon, more than 350 of them going to people from the Mahon area.

“The big thing about today is that it took such a long time to get planning permission and now we finally reached our completion.”

The site, which was developed by Mr O’Callaghan in conjunction with German investment fund DEKA, had been purchased in 1998 but had only received final planning permission in 2002.

The €203m shopping centre was just one part of the €500m MahonPoint development, Mr O’Callaghan noted, with plans for a retail park, office space and a four-star 200-bedroom hotel. The hotel plan would later be abandoned, its place eventually taken by further office space.

In a sign perhaps of the Celtic Tiger times, Mr O’Callaghan said that Cork people had been “heading in other directions — to Dublin and even further afield to shop”. The new shopping centre, he said, would attract people to Cork “and keep Cork people in Cork”.

Now, 20 years on, Mahon Point is a permanent fixture on Cork’s retail landscape.

Owen O’Callaghan passed away in 2017 at the age of 76, one of the State’s most successful developers, and one of the few to survive Ireland’s ruinous property crash. Over the course of four decades, he transformed Cork city, building some of its most significant commercial, retail and housing developments, including those on Opera Lane, Half Moon Street, Merchants’ Quay, North Main Street, Lavitt’s Quay and Paul Street.

In April 2020, approximately 1,000 Debenhams workers at 11 stores across the county, including around 300 in Mahon Point and Patrick Street, were informed that their jobs were gone as the retailer was pulling out of Ireland, and that they would not receive previously agreed redundancy payments.

Staff blocked stock from leaving shuttered stores for more than one year. The strike eventually came to an end when a proposal for a €3m training fund for the workers was put to a ballot, and was accepted by a majority.