I write to you as a proud citizen of Letterkenny who looks at the current state of the town’s Market Square and surrounding buildings with a sense of dismay.
As someone who grew up on the Main Street in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I believe the town and the Square were better serviced then when they had a vast array of different retail outlets, than it is now.
It saddens me today to see so many businesses closed, buildings in poor repair and despite the promise of major funding to regenerate the Main Street and Market Square a few years ago, this seems to have disappeared.
What has happened to this funding and proposed regeneration?
Whilst we have a great town with excellent facilities with great credit to our local representatives, sadly in my opinion, successive councils have not adequately addressed the obvious deterioration of our town centre.
The Main Street, in its current format, is not, I believe, an attractive proposition for potential business start-ups and we have to ask the reason why that is?
The council have never got to grips with the change from the two-way traffic system to the current one-way system enforced on the local business community in the 1980s, which I believe was to the detriment of the town centre.
I believe there are a lot of well qualified officials in our council who need to stand up and deliver now to save the heart of our great town.
There are so many hard working groups in Letterkenny, such as the Tidy Towns committee who do Trojan work in and around town.
But they need support, and the physical face of our main thoroughfare needs an urgent overhaul.
With a newly elected council now in place, I believe it’s an opportune time for all relevant stakeholders to get together and show some leadership to address this issue sooner rather than later to save the town we love so well.
– Peter Cutliffe, Letterkenny
This letter featured in the Letters to the Editor section of our Thursday edition. If you have a letter you would like included in our paper, please sent to editor@donegalnews.com
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