Criticism of trend of vape and phone shops on prime Cork city streets

There are currently 35 vape and phone shops in Cork city centre, dereliction campaigners have said.

In response to criticisms of the trend, the City Council said current legislation does not allow it to distinguish between these stores and other retail during the planning process.

Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry of anti-dereliction lobby group Derelict Ireland said that they have been advocating to shine a light on the scale of vacancy and dereliction in Cork City, and have seen more and more buildings coming back to life as homes and businesses.

“However," they added, "there has been a worrying trend in recent years of a proliferation of vape and phone shops in what were in some cases vacant or derelict buildings.” 

This is particularly evident in Cork city centre, where they say they counted 35 of these shops, 23 of which promote vaping on the shop front.

“That’s a lot of vaping and phone repairing within a 1km city centre radius. In a time where cigarettes are deemed societally unacceptable due to health concerns it seems strange to be so aggressively promoting and enabling an equivalent unhealthy activity, while many of the shop fronts would also seem to be flaunting council policy," they added.

“There are other concerns, too, such as the recent fire in Glasgow’s iconic 1851 train station where the fire started in a vape shop. Vapes that contain batteries that are dangerous at every stage of their single linear life cycle, from mining to vaping and disposal.

“All of this raises questions on what kind of urban centres do we want?” 

A motion at the most recent meeting of Cork City Council by Green party councillor Oliver Moran proposed it should be an objective of Cork City Council that 33% of commercial units on Patrick's Street will be occupied by local and slow or circular-economy businesses”.

Niall Ó Donnabháin, the council’s director of planning and integrated development, said: “planning legislation and guidance does not currently differentiate” between different types of stores.

Phone and vape stores were raised during discussion of the motion, and Mr Ó Donnabháin said: “This is an issue with legislation, we don’t have the remit to control it. A vape shop, despite people’s perception, is still a shop.” 

CLOSES

If a clothing store closes and the new owners seek to open a vape shop there, this does not require change of use planning permission like changing the store to a restaurant, bar, office or betting shop would.

He added that the council was looking into places that could be defined as an architectural conservation area, where specific types of use for buildings in those areas would be set out that could prohibit vape shops “where people have concern that the nature and character of the area would change negatively”.

However, he said this sort of policy “has to be carefully managed, we don’t want to put overly restrictive policies in place” that would precent business owners from bringing vacant commercial units back into use.

The council’s shopfront policy states “ground floor shop fronts shall be consistent with the fenestration details and architectural and streetscape character of the remainder of the structure or of neighbouring structures”.

Labour councillor Peter Horgan previously told The Echo that under its own current legislation, the council should not be allowing “garish” vape shop fronts.