Willie Wonka inspires theme park in Dublin Docklands

A Chocolate Factory Park built on a theme drawn from the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory will be among four parks created in the Dublin Docklands area to help create a family living quarter in inner-city Dublin, a conference heard yesterday.

Dublin needs to follow the European model that develops family units in the inner city rather than catering purely for single people, Gerry Kelly, director of social regeneration with the Dublin Docklands Development Association (DDDA), said at the fourth annual social regeneration conference yesterday.

Since 1997 when the Docklands project was launched, the area's population had increased from 17,500 to 21,000. By 2015 it should be 42,500, he forecast.

The State-sponsored project aims to physically, socially and economically regenerate Dublin's eastern side into a "world-class city quarter".

The project extends over 520 hectares and total investment by public and private groups is estimated to reach €7 billion by 2012.

Some 11,000 new housing units will come on stream shortly and there will be four different housing concepts alongside the old-established family communities, Mr Kelly outlined.

They include social housing, market units, affordable housing and affordable rental units. "Active citizenship" empowering and integrating families through education from primary to third level was the key to integrating the different strands, he said.

Mr Kelly advocated post-occupancy training for families moving into the area in conjunction with the locally-based National College of Ireland. The success of the docklands project hinged on family living and on education, he said.

"The Docklands is not a bricks and mortar project, it's a people's project," Mr Kelly said. Chocolate Factory Park, and Chimney Park were being developed on the south quays near Grand Canal square, with North Lotts Park on the north side and Linear Park alongside the North Wall.

Chief executive Paul Maloney said the authority was currently carrying out an audit of facilities over the next 12 months. The need for a number of swimming pools as well as indoor leisure facilities had been identified already by communities.

Three theatres and the National Conference Centre are among major building projects scheduled to come on stream in the next two to three years and there are now 5,000 new jobs in financial services in the likes of Google, O2 and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mr Maloney said locals were getting top jobs directly in the financial services centres "not the cleaning, not security". Some 168 local people worked at high levels.

One 24-year-old girl from East Wall had recently been promoted as a fund manager with Bank of Scotland.

School principal Florence Nagle, from St Lawrence O'Toole's primary girls school in Seville Place near Sheriff Street, has worked in inner-city school since the late-1960s.

"It's not perfect, but we are getting there," said Ms Nagle, who is originally from Kilfenora in Co Clare. She has seen dramatic changes in what had been a deprived school in a deprived and "depressed" area in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.