OVERVIEW

Athlone Town Centre

This 108,390 sq.m. development incorporates 66 retail units, 148 residential units; five restaurants and a café; an 11 storey, 167-bed 4-star hotel; a covered street and square; a crèche and 1,140 car parking spaces on a 2.9 ha site adjacent to the town’s historical quarter.

The project was about ‘stitching and mending’ existing streetscapes, and making connections and spaces, as much as it was about giving appropriately authentic contemporary expression to its core function, the retail centre.

A new order was overlaid on the site, imposing a pattern of streets and lanes, squares and courtyards on land that was hitherto excluded from the fabric of the town. The scheme was awarded the 2008 Irish Planning Institute Urban Design Award and was described by the judges as “a new urban quarter of exceptional architectural quality and coherence”.

DETAILS

Client:	Gallico Developments Ltd
Site area:	c.2.9 ha
Status:	Completion October 2007