A friend of mine lives in a building on Temple Bar Square in Dublin that McDonald’s intend to open a restaurant in. I’m genuinely interested in whether people think this is a good or a bad thing.
A lot of people, including the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, will be objecting to the plans. [This was stated on a recent interview on the Moncrieff Show on Newstalk.]
Personally, having spent a lot of time in my friend’s apartment and watching what goes on out there on the square, I think it would be very hard to lower the tone of Temple Bar any further. Admittedly there are too many fast food joints and pubs in the area already, but in terms of preserving the area’s “cultural” status where were all the objections to Spar, Tesco, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Urban Outfitters and the Hard Rock Cafe opening up?
A similar question springs to mind when the issue of local restaurants comes up. If the lease was available why didn’t an Irish business try and acquire it? Should McDonald’s now be punished for being on the ball?
The only reasonable point against McDonald’s opening that I’ve heard is that just because an area already has a lot of crap in it already doesn’t mean you should be able to open up another fast food joint. However, this only holds up if you believe that there is any hope of fulfilling making progress towards the original vision of Temple Bar as a cultural arts space. And I don’t believe there is.
Unfortunately the public gets what the public wants and the public wants what the public gets…
Bring it on !! Jamie will be delighted with this news !! and I will pretend to be dragged in and then order a cheeseburger “since i’m bloody here now”.