Month: September 2016

Enter your building or nominate a building for the Cork Better Building Awards 2017.

Click here to submit your entry.

~ Honouring the best Buildings and businesses in Cork ~
Cork Business Association and Cork City Council have officially launched this year’s Cork Better Building Awards, which are run in association with The Evening Echo and RedFM.

The awards honour the best-designed and best-kept buildings in Cork City and suburbs, and are aimed at rewarding businesses and building care-takers for their efforts to protect, enhance and improve the city’s street scape.  This significantly contributes to a public perception of the city as a vibrant and dynamic place to live, visit, invest and do business in.

The awards will be presented by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Des Cahill, at a glamorous invitation only lunch on Friday November 11.   Details will follow.

Every business, heritage building owner, architect, conservation project and tourism facility in the greater Cork area is invited to enter the prestigious awards, whether you have recently upgraded the exterior of your building, designed a stunning new build, painted or decorated your building, invested in the upkeep of an old building, introduced a new use for your building or you are just extremely proud of how your building looks.

The categories for the awards are:

• Best in Retail
• Best in Pub
• Best in Heritage & Conservation
• Best in Café / Restaurant
• Best in Commercial Business Frontage (excl. retail)
• Best in Tourism, Arts & Accommodation
• Best New Development
• People’s Choice
• Judges Choice

Buildings can be entered into more than one category where appropriate and there will also be a Judges Choice building award.

Speaking about the awards, Lawrence Owens, CEO of Cork Business Association, said, “We are delighted to once again work in partnership with Cork City Council on the Better Building Awards this year.  We sometimes forget what a beautiful city Cork is and how rich and diverse our architectural offering is. The Awards are a fantastic opportunity to encourage businesses to improve their facades and the overall look of the city’s street-scape.  Much of the attention of the awards is on the maintenance and simple good housekeeping of buildings – painting and cleaning, planting and enhancements – ways that will make the very best of the building.  The exterior of a building is one of its biggest selling tools, so we are encouraging everyone to have pride in their buildings – it’s an investment in ourselves that can offer genuine rewards - not least of which is a sense of pride of place.”

Also commenting, Ann Doherty of Cork City Council, said, “Cork City Council recognises the importance of the city centre to the social economic and cultural life of the Cork area and considers that the efforts of many property owners to maintain and develop their premises should be acknowledged and rewarded.  We need to keep the look of our building to a high standard and, in doing so, highlight Cork as a fantastic place to shop, work and live.  We are currently addressing the vacant buildings issue and these awards are part of a host of on-going initiatives targeted at creating a better looking Cork City.”

The awards are run by Cork Business Association and sponsored by Cork City Council, The Evening Echo and Red FM.  The judging panel includes  Ann Bogan, Senior Planner Cork City Council, Eoghan Ryan, Reimagine Cork, Eoin Kennedy, Zone Digital, and Alan Healy, The Evening Echo.

Last year’s winners included The Keynes Centre, UCC, Salingers Winthrop Arcade, Callanans Pub Georges Quay, The Ambassador Hotel,  Military Hill.

Entry is open to all previous winners.

The closing date for applications is October 10 2016 to afford the judges time to inspect and visit the nominated buildings.

If you think your building is worthy of winning one (or more) of the categories, or if you would like to recommend a building, fill out an application form on www.corkbusiness.ie or call 021 4278295 and we will post the form to you.

culture-night-cork-city-2016

Planning approval for a €90 million office scheme, has been granted by Cork City Council for a significant urban site — the next springboard move into docklands renewal in the city.

The development, titled Navigation Square, will span 310,000 sq ft, making it the single biggest city centre office development.

Developer Owen O’Callaghan has been granted permission by the local authority for an amended plan spanning four new buildings for his site at Navigation House, on Albert Quay, and bounded by the quay and the river Lee to the north and by Victoria Road and Albert Quay and Albert Street, about 250 metres from City Hall

Welcoming the city council’s green light in recent days for Navigation Square, Mr O’Callaghan described it as “a very significant project that makes Cork city much more attractive for foreign direct and indigenous investment projects.”

O’Callaghan Properties say their four Albert Quay buildings, with roof terraces, two restaurants and 100,000 sq ft of double-basement car and bike parking, are designed to ‘Gold LEED’ energy efficiency standards, with floors flexibly configured for general office accommodation as well as space for other business and technology uses.

“The buildings and river-side location will certainly appeal to the young employee demographic characteristic of enterprises in the new economy,” said OCP MD Owen O’Callaghan. “The area has many links with Cork’s maritime trading history and hopefully this project will help to write a new chapter for business in the city and generate high value jobs for Cork. ”

Cork Business Association Chief Executive Lawrence Owens said "this project would continue the transformation of the Docklands area. It would deliver up to 350 construction jobs and when completed the 310000 sq ft could house up to 3000 staff. This hugely positive announcement will provide a major confidence boost to business in Cork city and will further strengthen Corks position as Ireland's second city and a viable and cost effective alternative to Dublin"

CBA welcomes Cork Airport's announcement today of Ryanair’s increase frequencies on their popular Lanzarote and Malaga routes next Summer as well as more flights to Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Malaga next winter, which will lead to further growth at the airport in 2017.

The news will mean a further increase of 20,000 extra Ryanair passengers through Cork Airport next year, rising from 840,000 this year to 860,000 in 2017. This makes Cork Airport, Ryanair’s second busiest Irish airport partner.

Niall MacCarthy, Managing Director at Cork Airport commented. “We welcome Ryanair’s announcement of further growth in 2017, which will see 860,000 Ryanair passengers flying through Cork Airport on 17 different routes. The additional flights will give our customers extra flexibility when making their plans to fly to the sun next winter or summer.”

“We are experiencing growth of 9% since January and I’m expecting this to continue through until year end. We are continuing to work with all our airline partners to identify further opportunities and we are confident that this growth path will continue into next year,” he added.