Yesteryears: Entire Clonmel street sells for €920,000 in unique property deal!
For this week’s Yesteryears feature we take the relatively short jump back of ten years to our issue dated December 6, 2012.
Our main front page headline that week read: “Unique Clonmel property deal as entire street sells for €920,000,” with a sub-heading that went: “Hopes that sale will breathe new life into Market Place.”
Eamon Lacey reported that an entire street was sold at a distressed property auction in a deal that attracted global interest. Eighteen buildings in Market Place, nine of which were vacant at the time, were sold at an auction by a telephone bidder generating hopes that the new owner would invest in the area, secure new tenants for unoccupied units and create job opportunities in the town.
“It’s great news for the town and for the existing unit holders,” said Ger Ambrose whose silver jewellers had opened in Market Place twelve years previously.
But as they say, be careful what you wish for, as sadly, a decade later, a walk through the same area, will reveal an even more decimated business trading area with even more vacant units than existed in 2012.
There was better news to be found on that week’s front page when Sian Moloughney reported that a €3 million science and technology park development that was feared stalled was to go ahead on a purpose-built site at Ballingarrane.
It would be a collaboration between South Tipperary County Council and Limerick Institute of Technology.
And in another piece we reported that up to 400 members of the Labour Party gathered in Clonmel to celebrate the founding of the party in the town 100 years previously.
They were met by a large group of local protestors, led by Deputy Seamus Healy, TD, outside Hotel Minella, who highlighted the recent closure of Kickhams Barracks, St Michael’s Psychiatric Unit and the then impending abolition of the Borough Council.