Empty commercial property

At last here is the video I've made about empties in Galway. Phew.......

Jaysys, is there anywhere left occupied over there. Some of those agents must be in real trouble.

Well done floatingingalway. A very poignant and pertinent film.
Galway will always have a very special place in my heart. I recognise a few buildings, most especially of course the Rooneys grey-painted building. Went back to Galway for the first time in many's a year in '06 (I have relatives there) and - well, maybe I was trying to love it too much thru those rose-tinted spectacles. My OH (see sep. thread) didn't like it - thought it way too shallow and full of itself. Well, so maybe there was always a bit of that. It was also always way more expensive than most other places in Ireland, midland Ireland anyway. But it always had some soul and not just fleeting studenty will-be-gone-next-year soul.

Might be back there for 48hrs at Xmas

That's disturbing floatiningalway - it reminded me of the Enniscorthy video - and I was in Waterford this week and there was a shocking amount of empty commercial spacei in some streets.

Some of the firms that have gone are old family businesses that came through the 1980s and always used to run very tight ships.

Some of these buildings may never be needed for their original purpose within their relatively short life expectancy. There was an English guy, Tom, who posted here who was arguing for converting commercial space into educational and even living space.

can you post his (Tom's) details again, Cactus? sorry, I know I'm being a tad lazy. He was on an education thread I believe.

floatingingalway, I have so many questions for you re galway itself. What's going on locally? same old, same old on the council, one presumes.

As Cactus said re another video, I am sure a similar-ish video could be made about every county in Ireland - and please, I do not in any way mean that as a negative.

https://machinenation.forumakers.com/the-natural-world-the-environment-f55/new-schools-article-about-the-need-to-build-new-smaller-schools-t1430.htm

There you go Atticus - there is a link in the thread to Tom Weaver's own blog as well.

What scares me is how little I recognise Galway. I was a regular visitor through the Eighties, and lived there for a few months in 95, but I don't think I lived in the city the video is of.

Atticus wrote:

can you post his (Tom's) details again, Cactus? sorry, I know I'm being a tad lazy. He was on an education thread I believe.

floatingingalway, I have so many questions for you re galway itself. What's going on locally? same old, same old on the council, one presumes.

As Cactus said re another video, I am sure a similar-ish video could be made about every county in Ireland - and please, I do not in any way mean that as a negative.

It sadly is the same old, same old on the council. I've sat through many a council meeting and the commercial property came up a lot. Unfortunately it was always to get clearance for more of it.
Any questions you have, Atticus, I am happy to answer to the best of my ability.

i work in D2 and within a mile of my building are 3 landmark corporate headquarters sitting empty. the funny thing is that dunne and the carroll are sniping at eachother building huge office complexes halfway between o'connell street and holyhead while there is plenty of office space in d1 and d2.

2 banks (boi and aib) are looking to relocate a lot of their office space down the docklands for no other reason than the generous tax breaks on new commercial property. if you move 5-10 thousand well paid employees to the docklands, whats the impact on d2, also there tends to be local monopolies for sandwich shops etc down there so expect the employees to get fleeced for their hummas and chicken wraps.

its very shortsighted.

take a walk aroung merrion sq and adelaide road and see the amount of "to let" signs. there are hundreds.

They aren't the only ones... of the big 5 law firms only 2 aren't down there and they apparently have plans to move although I'd imagine they're on hold now.

AIB would be mad to move, their HQ campus is a lovely environment.

The link to the words of Celtic Tiger is a brilliant idea. Nice one!

There is a lot of poor workmanship in some of those shots. The tiler or whoever was responsible for the base on one of those floors should be made to go and learn his trade. They were an affront to my vision. Who was supervising? There should be hell to pay for that sort of work.


A glut of commercial properties will force rents down in the longer term and that will eventually be good for the economy. There may eventually be lots of affordable space for new businesses. Commercial buildings tend to be very flexible open shells.

floatingingalway wrote:

The link to the words of Celtic Tiger is a brilliant idea. Nice one!

That was very tastily made there - great choice of song (I just used some other phrase from one of his songs on the other thread) and some great sunshine too - a rarity for Galway How much of it did you do yourself and will you give us a little insight into how you technically stuck it together if you have the time or interest. We are fairly geeky here after all. I just haven't gotten around to mucking with youtube too much so far but what can be done with it is very impressive.

There's a very nerdy community out there of Finance Heads and they generally follow the same pontificators or prognosticators and tend to be a very earnest no-bullshit group and your video could get sucked into that kind of arena easily. They love facts, figures and data of course, these guys.

I watched your other video too - it brought a tear to my eye. But sorry I'm off topic now unless I ask how the Rooneys are doing up there ?

(must watch it again to see the bad workmanship Squire mentioned )

Auditor #9 wrote:

(must watch it again to see the bad workmanship Squire mentioned )

The most obvious is the floors they are not level. Look at the flooring 4.06 in!! Look at the line of the joints. EEEK that puts my teeth on edge. It is like running finger nails down a blackboard with me. I feel the an urge for a 'see me' letter.

That does look like very bad workmanship at 4:06.

Is that not either a trick of the light or a particular style of tile ? It does look like something a bunch of monkeys with screwdrivers would make a better job of but the building it's in looks pretty flash.

I've done shite tile work in my life (I call it 'the rustic look') but I've an excuse.

The floor is not level unless there is something very weird about those tiles. What annoys me about this sort of thing is it cost the same to do it properly. There is no excuse for that. To me that is a waste of good materials.

Tip about buildings, look at where things join. Look at the corners or where a wall meets the ceiling and you will soon see how level the walls or ceilings are. Look at the edge of doors when they are closed in the frames. etc etc. Compare one against the other and the shortcomings become very obvious.

Auditor #9 wrote:

floatingingalway wrote:

The link to the words of Celtic Tiger is a brilliant idea. Nice one!

That was very tastily made there - great choice of song (I just used some other phrase from one of his songs on the other thread) and some great sunshine too - a rarity for Galway How much of it did you do yourself and will you give us a little insight into how you technically stuck it together if you have the time or interest. We are fairly geeky here after all. I just haven't gotten around to mucking with youtube too much so far but what can be done with it is very impressive.

There's a very nerdy community out there of Finance Heads and they generally follow the same pontificators or prognosticators and tend to be a very earnest no-bullshit group and your video could get sucked into that kind of arena easily. They love facts, figures and data of course, these guys.

I watched your other video too - it brought a tear to my eye. But sorry I'm off topic now unless I ask how the Rooneys are doing up there ?

(must watch it again to see the bad workmanship Squire mentioned )

Thanks Audi. I filmed it all myself. In one or two of the shots you'll notice that I was being driven while filming. I edited it with Final Cut Pro. I have used this program a bit in the past as a friend of mine is a colour-blind film-maker and I do his colour correction for him. I had never done the whole shebang from start to finish before though. It took a lot longer than I expected! I'm addicted now though.
It was filmed in HDV which meant I had to compress it before attempting youtube.
The building with the bad workmanship is the old McDonaghs building on Merchant's Rd.

Well I watched your other video and I think it's a lot more serious but related too. You're talking about the ending of the human race there, potentially, or so they say. Even wiping out an entire species like that ...

Yeah, it's easier to film while being driven alright...

I hope you make more now !

Auditor #9 wrote:

Well I watched your other video and I think it's a lot more serious but related too. You're talking about the ending of the human race there, potentially, or so they say. Even wiping out an entire species like that ...

Yeah, it's easier to film while being driven alright...

I hope you make more now !

I'm toying with the idea of doing a vox pop one asking people what they think will happen in the next five years. Could be a very interesting insight into the psyche on the street.