Lopsided development has hampered Waterford's attempts to show off its best assets that front onto the River Suir, writes Frank McDonald.
Waterford is like "a bird with one wing", as the city council's senior planner John Andrews puts it - the entire city centre and most of the suburbs are located on the south bank of the River Suir, behind what was once described as "the noblest quay in Europe".
Like Limerick, Waterford is constrained by an artificial boundary, which takes in barely more than a sliver of the Suir's north bank and even bisects the Ard Rí Hotel, that eight-storey slab that was plonked on Sion Hill in the late 1960s. Not far beyond the church in Ferrybank, is Co Kilkenny.
The rapidly-developing suburb of Abbeylands, less than two miles from the centre, is in the "Waterford Environs", and is administered by Kilkenny County Council's rural-based Pilltown area committee. "Welcome to County Kilkenny - Twinned with Leicestershire", says the big sign on the N25 as you approach the area.
A 1999 move by the city council to extend the boundary into Co Kilkenny received cross-party support, but ran into unanimous opposition from Kilkenny County Council.
The Kilkenny TD Mr Liam Aylward, of Fianna Fáil, said it would be a "foolish Minister" who would try to implement it in the absence of agreement.
Though there are good relations between the two authorities, Waterford City Council has appealed against Kilkenny's decision to approve a major shopping centre at Abbeylands. As custodian of Waterford, the council fears this scheme would undermine its role as the south-east region's retail core.
The developers, Deerlands Ltd, had lobbied for the site to be zoned as a district centre, rather than merely a neighbourhood one, and Kilkenny County Council duly obliged. Ironically, it was sold to Deerlands by the city council, which now sees the plan to develop it as a "mini-Quarryvale" in the making.
Hundreds of houses have already been built in Abbeylands - and at eight or 10 dwellings per acre, it's as if the 1999 Residential Density Guidelines didn't exist. Altogether, permission has been granted for 1,200-1,400 houses in the area, even though the road off which many of them are built is inadequate.
Both Waterford City Council and Kilkenny County Council subscribed to a 1998 strategic framework plan for the city's expansion on the north bank of the Suir and also to the recently-adopted Waterford Planning, Land Use and Transportation Study, which endorses this approach.
PLUTS, as it is known, was drawn up in the context of Waterford's designation as a "gateway" under the National Spatial Strategy. Significantly larger than any other urban area in the south-east, it is the region's natural capital - and the city council is determined to keep it that way.
Four years ago, when Prof John FitzGerald of the ESRI queried why Galway was "the Irish success" in terms of growth and Waterford was "the failure", the former city manager Eddie Breen said that continued growth "will make us the new Galway" - though that would not necessarily be a good thing.
A survey at the time found that average incomes in the south-east were 79 per cent of the national average, unemployment was marginally higher and only 24 per cent of the city's population had a third-level qualification, compared to 42 per cent in Galway. A quarter was also classified as deprived.
Under the Government's decentralisation programme, Waterford is slated to get 200 employees of the Department of the Environment even though its headquarters would be located in Wexford; a key figure in this divvy-up was local Fianna Fáil TD, Martin Cullen, its political boss at the time.
The existing Government office block at the head of Bridge Street, a previously nondescript 1980s building, has been transformed into a colourful flagship of Merrion Street's rule by Kilkenny architects O'Donnell Dalton. But it couldn't accommodate 200 more staff, so another block will be needed.
Waterford's largest office building, which rises to seven storeys at the edge of People's Park, is called Maritana Gate after the 19th century light opera; it is also prominently located at one of the entrances to a city which hosts an international light opera festival annually at its very fine Theatre Royal.
What makes Waterford unique, however, is the survival of so much of its medieval fortifications. Reginald's Tower, on the corner of the quay, is the largest and best known of six mural towers. Extensive lengths of the city walls are still upstanding, even if they only mark the boundaries of modern gardens.
The current city plan, adopted in 2002, says the towers and walls "represent an outstanding legacy of the city's history...a unique resource for residents and visitors alike". Yet Waterford is underperforming in attracting tourists; as PLUTS conceded, it is seen as a "pass-through" point rather than a destination.
That's one of the reasons why Michael Brennan and Brendan McCann, two lecturers at Waterford Institute of Technology, have objected to some of the developments being planned for the city - particularly if there is any encroachment on the walls, which they believe should be developed as a tourist trail.
Last August, they were attacked by two local developers, John Brady and George Wadding, who described the two lecturers as "serial objectors" who had continually sought to disrupt and delay important developments that are vital to securing the economic stability of Waterford and its environs.
Apart from appealing against two schemes for O'Connell Street in which they are involved, Mr Brennan and Mr McCann had also held up a major development at Railway Square - site of the old Tramore line's terminus - where a mixed use scheme of apartments, offices, retail units and cineplex is being built.
Standing on the nearby bridge over St John's River, Brendan McCann pointed out that the construction of this complex would obliterate an important view of three of the city's towers - the French Tower, the Double Tower and the Watch Tower - and sections of upstanding medieval wall between them.
As a result of their appeal, An Bord Pleanála effectively ordered a re-design, mainly to improve the amenities of residents of the 100-plus apartments and to make provision for a riverside walkway; this will hopefully be more useful than the flimsy efforts made by two other developers in the vicinity.
"We're not professional objectors," Michael Brennan insists. "What we're concerned about are the missed opportunities to get things right."
Brendan McCann, who is a member of the Green Party, says: "It's the context that is being lost. People may look at all this quite differently in 50 years' time."
Waterford has seen at least 400 apartments built, most successfully around Scotch Quay. But many of the schemes, particularly those being packed into narrow streets east of the Franciscan church, just about meet minimum standards. "No families could live in them," according to Michael Brennan.
Where the city scores is in the quality of its paving and street furniture. John Roberts Square, named after the architect who designed Waterford's two cathedrals in the late 18th century, is paved in small stone setts with limestone water channels and polished stone benches around a French-style fountain.
Barrowstrand Street, outside the Catholic cathedral, has received similar high-quality treatment and this is now being extended along the quay, around its Victorian Gothic Clock Tower. The next phase will be Broad Street, one of the main shopping areas, which has a genuinely indigenous character. A millennium plaza, named after light opera composer William Vincent Wallace, has been installed on the site of Purcell's cattle sheds on the South Quay; its tented structure provides a bandstand, though the area is mostly used by skateboarders. Nearby is a new marina with moorings for visiting yachts.
Other significant projects include the award-winning Waterford City Museum,housed in a gable-fronted granary on the quay, and the new Library by Dublin architects McCullough Mulvin, which has also won awards. The equestrian statue of Thomas Francis Meagher on The Mall manages to look medieval.
Major employers include Waterford Glass (though its star is no longer ascendant), Bausch, Lomb, Hasbro and Honeywell. The latter three are based in Waterford Industrial Estate, which has also recently acquired Genzyne, a bio-tech company from Boston, housed in a strikingly large metal clad building.
At nearby WIT, the new library by Andrej Wejchert + Partners provides a good frontage along the Cork road and will be augmented by new buildings for nursing education and tourism studies. There are also proposals to establish a University of the South-East on a new campus to the west. Many better-paid employees live in new housing estates behind well-built stone walls on the Dunmore Road, each more "exclusive" than the last. However, the number of people living in the city went up by less than 5 per cent to 44,564 in 2002, with a further 55,000-plus in its hinterland.
Waterford is now looking to develop the North Quays, extending eastwards from Rice Bridge, where the wharves have been redundant since the port relocated downriver to Belview in 1993. The 18-acre site is to go on the market shortly, now that legal problems with Iarnród Éireann are resolved.
The potential of the North Quays was recognised in 1998 when the Office of Public Works, where Martin Cullen was in charge, drew up a "development vision" for the area and subsequently organised an international architectural and urban design competition which attracted 99 entries from 23 countries.
The competition was won by London-based IDOM UK for proposing "a deliberate, calm and refined piece of urban structure". It would incorporate a landmark venue building as well as apartment and office blocks along the quay front complementing Waterford's scale, with higher buildings to the rear.
However, just like Cork and its docklands, there must be some doubt about whether the city will gain sufficient "critical mass" to sustain such an ambitious development programme, even over a 20-year period.
And if the North Quays need a level of "imported demand", where is this going to come from?
Waterford is gearing up to host the Tall Ships Race in July 2005 - an event that local architect Anne Harpur believes will "re-awaken interest in the river" and focus attention on its quays, which she describes as "the essential Waterford". She also welcomes the fact that "fresh ideas are coming into the city".
Six years ago, Anne Harpur was involved in a campaign to prevent Bus Éireann building a new bus station on the south quays.
And while the completed project is less obtrusive than she feared, the real danger was that the quays were zoned commercial then and "anything could have been built there".
The current city plan acknowledges that the quays "form a major element in the urban structure", and says few cities "can boast the retention of such a magnificent length of city centre waterfront" while it pledges to "preserve and protect" its qualities. But what are these qualities, as the quays stand today?
Most of the strip between the road and the river is owned by Waterford Port and functions as a surface car-park, with a capacity of 500 cars, lined by crude railings more appropriate to sheep pens. With the cars removed and the railings replaced, it could become a linear amenity space as in Dublin's Docklands.
