Council seeking funding for €10m Northgate Street digital hub
Westmeath County Council is seeking funding for the proposed €10m Athlone Digital and Innovation Hub on Northgate Street, which could see part of the old workhouse building redeveloped.
Phase one of the project was granted funding of €1m from the Just Transition Fund in May of last year and now the council is working on sourcing funds for the €10m capital investment. Last year's €1m funding was to cover the cost of enabling works, including works to the protected structures, demolition, ground works and services.
The council stated that the initial €1m investment “will remove site barriers and pave the way for a €10m capital investment proposed to be funded under the Smart Regions Innovation Fund (EI)”.
The objective of Enterprise Ireland's Smart Regions Innovation Fund, which has a total value of €145.3m, is to drive job creation/retention and enterprise development in each region of the country.
The Northgate Street hub, which will be developed by Westmeath County Council and TUS at the former workhouse site, will focus on innovation, collaboration in research, design, development and testing of innovative solutions. It will also house the Advanced Technology in Manufacturing for the Midlands region.
The hub will provide a suite of supports and an eco-system for start-ups, existing micro-enterprises and SMEs. The facility will provide 200 remote working space and have capacity to create 250 jobs at 80% occupancy.
Fianna Fáil's Cllr Aengus O'Rourke said this week he is confident the hub will be funded.
“We produced draft designs a couple of years ago. We now have more specific designs in place. We're looking at how much it will cost to implement these,” he said.
“The fact that we were successful with the €1m paves the way for success later on,” he added.
“We will see it developed,” said Cllr O'Rourke.
“It's a sensitive building to work with. I think it will work brilliantly with TUS as our main partner. A huge part of our success in this town is down to TUS and the vibrant pipeline of talented people coming out year on year,” he added.
The Smart Regions Enterprise Innovation Scheme is supported under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Its aim is to accelerate economic growth in all regions of the country, by working with stakeholders to deliver on their potential regional enterprise strengths.
The scheme will support the development of innovative services through local infrastructure, innovation clusters, services to SMEs and early stage feasibility and priming research.
Enterprise Ireland states that the projects should be collaborative in nature; innovative; financially viable and sustainable.