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Field of Dreams

Story added by John Black, 18 February 2009

I have read the blogs and like what I read but,as usual we are all over the place. What can we get behind that will bring jobs, bring visitors, fill our empty shops, widen our derry vision of the world. It can start festivals, create things for tourists to see, help the airport, etc etc etc.

Its easy , its the immediate expansion of the university.

Build it and they will come to quote from the film Field of Dreams.

John Black

Comments (2)

Definitely need to coordinate and prioritise our ideas. First priority is to assess the performance of the people that we have employed to do this for us. Ilex have already brought a professional attitude to the idea of a regeneration strategy, but it seems they are not getting cooperation from the representatives of the Derry people, i.e. the go getters with shiny video blogs on the right. I havent heard any news of a joint development plan or real constructive efforts from any of them. it seems DCC, NWDev, are not representing the demands of the people and are blocking cooperation and a joint strategy being pushed by Ilex. Personal and political bickering, as ever, are blocking united and essential progress.

We need a strong Mayor/General who is committed to listening to our demands, and a team at DCC, NWDev that will work together to get;

-first a united strategy to improve the quality of the cityscape overall,

-a few key projects to define our commercial identity and future, ie Large Specialist University (IT/Peace/Teaching) + tourism/quality of Citylife in general(Promotion of unique Derry History and culture + A Peace Centre)

-A team of project developers to include specialists in attracting EU finance for such projects, and develop our efforts in attracting international joint ventures, project financing

We can see from Project Kelvin and the efforts of the few people taking the initiative to research the project properly out of the reach of local lunatics like Arlene Foster, that we have the intelligence and responsibility to speak for ourselves on these matters. What we really need is a new political party in NI and Derry that does not care about the politics that has divided and conquered progress in our region for the last century. We need a political representative that cares about progress not opposition.

We can write emails to papers, MPs, MEPs, and speak at public events and forums to express our demands wherever we can.


Patrick Lynch 19 February 2009

Patrick, You are ahead of the game with your ideas. And as a city we are actually well on our way working through your list already.

* A united strategy - The Regeneration Plan is being prepared as an output of Futuresearch that is looking at developing an action plan covering all the areas identified in futuresearch.

* Out of that will come a big list of actions which we need to PRIORITISE and I hope concentrate on a top 3 first. From a Chamber perspective Jobs and University will be in our top 3

* The project developers are being installed to develop and manage the Regeneration Plan at this very time.

*At a meeting on Friday 30th March of Civic Regeneration Forum, the issue of under utilisation of EU funds was raised. Brussels is awash with money. We just don't have anyone looking out for it for us and applying for it. Not sure if anyone is doing anything on that yet, but lets keep asking. Fire in the emails and letters to our politicians and see what we get.


Janice Tracey 31 March 2009

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