Council need to tackle Athy vacant properties

Do you remember Athy of the 1950s? How does it compare to Athy of 2025?

Despite the fact that the town’s population has more than doubled in the meantime, Athy’s commercial life has deteriorated to a disappointing level.

I cannot recall any vacant shop premises in Athy in the 1950s.

On Offaly Street where I lived there were a number of shops, all of which are now closed. Kehoe’s Public House has not opened for several years, while Kitty Webster’s and Mona Sylvester’s sweet shops, both closed for years, have now been redeveloped as apartments. The cinema on the same street, once so popular many years ago, is no more.

Public houses, of which there was so many in the town, have closed up and like Michael Noonan’s in Stanhope Street and Barney Dunne’s in Duke Street are forlorn reminders of happy days.

In the 1920s, there were forty or more licenced premises in Athy catering for a population of about 4,000 people.

Today with the population of 10,000 or more, the public houses still serving the public come to less than ten.

The explanation may in part lie in the operation of off licences and the strict application of drink driving legislation.

The grocery shops in the 1950s have disappeared following the emergence of supermarkets and the subsequent centralisation of the grocery trade.

Do you remember the shop assistants of seventy years ago who dressed in their light brown shop coats took your order and presented the groceries on the counter?

Groceries which included sugar, flour and many other food stuffs had to be weighed and bagged earlier in the day by the shop assistant.

Here today in Athy, the entire groceries trade once spread over 20 or more shops is now centred on four supermarkets.

In many cases the former grocery shop premises today lie vacant, in some cases for many years, giving the towns streetscape a sad impression of dereliction.

How much worse our main streets would be if we did not have today so many hairdressing businesses, nail bars, coffee shops and restaurants which were not to be found in Athy of the 1950s.

Today our main streets have a surfeit of empty shop premises which creates a bad image for the town once regarded as the best market town in Leinster.

Saturday evening shopping in the 1950s was a boom time for local shops as the country people came, particularly to Shaws, which remained open until late that evening.

Shaws created a huge footfall in the 1950s which benefitted other shops in the town. Its influence in that regard is today less apparent given the present-day high volume of car ownership and local shoppers’ willingness to drive to other towns to do their shopping.

The 1950s was a really good time for the shoppers of Athy. Theft from shops was a rare crime those days, while the local gardaí were busy raiding pubs for after-hour drinking and prosecuting cyclists for using their bikes without lights after sunset.

It was a simple way of life but one which was marked by poverty for many families in the absence of employment.

The result in emigration, principally to Britain, saw young families without fathers for months on end.

It was not just fathers who left their home town but also boys and girls who could not get gainful employment at home.

The boys had a better chance than the girls in obtaining gainful employment locally as the boys, even before their fourteenth birthday, were able to take up employment in the Asbestos factory or the IVI Foundry.

The present drabness of the town’s main streets and side streets prompts me to ask what, if anything, is being done or planned by the appropriate authorities to improve Athy’s streetscape?

I am conscious as a taxpayer, a rate payer and a property tax payer that Kildare County Council should be more proactive in tackling the issue of vacant and sometimes derelict shop premises in the town.

Financial incentives such as rates and property tax abatement schemes may be required to encourage the opening of more independent shops.

Having written the above on Wednesday morning, I found the following on Facebook some hours later: ‘Kildare County Council have been awarded €998,800 under the Department of Rural and Community Development Fund to revitalise the famous Athy Christian Brother’s School into a state-of-the-art centre for circular economy and regenerative business activity.’ I understand that the grant is the result of an initiative by cllr Brian Dooley who some months ago approached the owners of the building and the local enterprise department of Kildare County Council regarding the purchase of the school to be used for apprentice training.

The reference to ‘a state-of-the art centre for circular economy’ puzzles me as I don’t understand what it means.

However, given its context I am sure that it is intended to help the ancient town of Athy which for too long has been exposed to unwelcome commercial and economic deprivation.

We need more independent shops along our main streets and hopefully the announcement of the Community Development Grant can be the start of a new era for the regeneration of business in Athy.