If You Can’t Stand De Heatons

They forgot the i

aysus, it seems as though every other week, Greystones main street goes through another round of musical chairs… 

As soon as one new shop or café opens, word comes down the pipeline that another is closing.

The big shocker this week is the departure of Heatons, the Meridian Point’s #1 magnet having long proven a major hit with those who suddenly had €3 to spare, or just needed something to do whilst the post office queue thinned out.

Swinging by yesterday, GG was assured that when Sports Direct open there in June, all the current Heatons staff will be kept on. As to their current 20% off closing down sale, that’s due to go on for “another two or three weeks”. So, hold off for at least a week. For the 50% off closing down sale. And then the 99% off closing down sale.

The arrival of Sports Direct will no doubt be welcomed by that particular breed of fine young Greystonian who only use sports fields for barbeques and shopping trolley races. Brace yourselves for a whole new shiny-shiny tracksuit range in the Tesco lobby over the coming summer.

On the foodie front, as Thai chain Camile prepare to open in Mount View, alongside gold-for-cash Meridian Point escapee, Eternity Jewellers (the just-opened Dream Delights taking their place), Declan down at Bochelli’s is getting ready to open up his new pizza venture in the abandoned Tramyard, and Café Gray has been sold, officially changing hands in June (with the old staff staying on), whilst the new Enso coffee & pizza emporium will soon arrive at Tesco.

Bejiggers, it’s hard to keep up with all the frothy frolics in this town.

Especially when you add in the recently-opened Bailey And Pim at the train station, and Relish just up the road, plus the closing, yet again, of that cursed little coffee shop up in Blacklion. Oh, and the addition of coffee shop & wine bar Brunel.

Not that it’s all happy families. Having closed in September last year, it was assumed that Pineto’s would have new takeaway tenants moving in within a few weeks, but it’s now back on the market, at €700,000, with a lease of €75,000 a year. Just around the corner, the troubled Bakers Table is up for grabs, at €395,000, as a restaurant/bar/hotel, the former Summervilles and Ferns home boasting a lease [with 24 years remaining] of €35,000 a year.

And with the sly Camile pulling out of Waverly & Lime Tree – just across the road from The Happy Pear – at the 11th hour, the former-home-turned-swanky-commercial-property is now applying for that all-important restaurant license. Whilst still waiting for someone to bite. 

Talking about empty-handed fishing trips, how long before someone finally takes on those La Touche Place units that have now become the town’s no.1 pop-up warehouse…? These retail units have been on Wicklow Homes’ website for, oh, 437 years now.

And there’s a strong chance that our main street will change again when the new business rates kick in.

And as for poor, beleaguered Delgany, work has now begun on the apartments behind The Wicklow Arms, whilst all eyes are on the village’s O’Gorman clan as they set about restoring the main building to its former glory.

As to the Carmelite nuns selling up and moving out in February, there’s every chance that all that lucrative and residentially-zoned land they left behind has already been signed, sealed and delivered to the highest bidder. Which means that the 50 or 60 houses, and retail units, due at Style Bawn House and the 82 Gorteen Way houses due on Bellevue Hill, won’t be the only new blocks on the block.

Have we missed anything? Pretty sure there’s a few more games of musical chairs going on around here, but, it’s Sunday, it’s late, and we’re feckin’ jaded from trying to keep up with this great big game of Monopoly that we’re all living in.

No doubt, by the end of next week, there’ll be a whole new landscape to chart…