Plan to move parts of university to city

UNIVERSITY OF Limerick (UL) president Don Barry has more than a twinkle in his eye when he talks about moving some of the university’s core activities from the leafy campus out at Plassey into the heart of the city.

He is determined to make it happen. “I think it would be great for Limerick if there were hundreds of students living and studying in the city centre,” he said, adding that a likely location was the Opera Centre site on Patrick Street, recently bought by the city council after plans to redevelop it fell apart.

Acting city manager Kieran Lehane said Limerick had a student population of 20,000, spread between UL, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick Institute of Technology and the School of Art and Design. In other words, it could be just as lively as Galway.

UL’s increasing engagement with the city is the most positive thing that is happening in Limerick, as demonstrated last Thursday when hundreds of people turned up at the former Franciscan church on Henry Street for the opening of a Design@UL exhibition.

Chicago-born Merritt Bucholz, head of UL school of architecture, has become a significant figure in making things happen, championing the idea of “Smarter Limerick”, involving a partnership between the city, county and university.

One of its first fruits was the establishment of the Smarter Travel office involving engineers from the city and county along with recent UL graduates. Working from an office at the Granary on Michael Street, they are planning a network of cycleways and walking routes.

“Ireland has to find new ways to be competitive,” said Mr Bucholz. “If the university and the local authorities were to co-operate on other things, the sky’s the limit, particularly in Limerick, so we could say: ‘This is a great place to come, look at what’s going on here’.”

Mr Bucholz’s colleague Elizabeth Hatz said UL should move its schools of architecture and design into the centre, although Prof Barry admitted that UL did not yet have the funding for this.

The big idea has not won universal approval among academics at UL, which used to pretend it was nowhere near “Stab City”.

Now it describes itself as having a “pioneering and connected” vision in its strategic plan, which includes the partial relocation proposal.