Newport development company celebrating 30 years of growth

With its iconic seven-arch viaduct and the magnificent Blackoak River flowing into Clew Bay, Newport, is regarded as one of the most picturesque towns in the county. The town – now known as the Town of the Two Graces and the heart of the Great Western Greenway – has a lot going for it.

But Newport did not always have a reputation as a thriving west Mayo tourism town. If you travelled its streets 30 years ago, it was usually only to pass through on the way to Achill. The only reason to stop might have been for an ice-cream from Chambers shop on Main Street.

“It was in a state,” admitted Maureen McGovern, who ran a guesthouse called The Anchor House on the Quay in Newport for many years.

“I don’t think we could get a cup of coffee or anything in the town. It was bad,” she added.

At the beginning of the 1990s, up to a dozen properties lay derelict in the centre of Newport, some with just their four walls left standing.

Maureen was one of a group of a small number of people who decided that something had to be done to change the image of Newport, and in 1994 they formed the Newport and District Development Company, or NADDCo for short.

Fast forward three decades, and NADDCo is getting reading to celebrate 30 years of community development with a function in Hotel Newport this Sunday, May 12 at 7pm. The organisation plans to deliver a presentation on its past achievements and unveil exciting future plans, while giving special recognition to individuals who have contributed to the town’s growth.

Early days

Two of the directors who played a significant role in the development and transformation of Newport were Maureen McGovern and Mary Kelly, who held a variety of roles in the company over the last 30 years.

The Mayo News met the two women in Hotel Newport – today is a thriving business, despite the site being a major eyesore in the town 30 years ago.

Both Maureen and Mary agreed that the top objective in the early days was tidying up the town and trying to get the derelict buildings renovated.

“We were very concerned. I was in the tourism business, and people would ask why [buildings were] derelict. People would say that it was such a lovely town and it was such a shame it was not developed properly,” Maureen explained.

They visited other towns like Clonakilty in west Cork to learn how similar small towns could succeed, and they soon realised that despite its problems, Newport had huge potential.

The renovation of an old granary – the Carey Walsh building on George’s Street – was one of the first major projects undertaken.

“The Carey Walsh building was totally derelict, and that was a major project,” Maureen explained. “Frank Chambers was a councillor at the time, and he was a great help.” The project also benefitted from Leader funding and FÁS scheme workers.

The building, which retains much of its old character, is now home to South West Mayo Development Company, as well as the tourist office that NADDCo helped set up.

Fundraising

NADDCo went on to facilitate the sandblasting of the viaduct and church, and the lighting that shows these features off so well. Other NADDCo projects include the development of the town park and children’s playground, the roll out of the Christmas lights, keeping the town tidy, the establishment of the local credit union, the organising of festivals, the installation of the ship’s anchor on the bridge and, probably most importantly of all, the setting up of the lotto.

Without the weekly lotto, NADDCo would not have had the resources to fund its projects, and so Maureen and Mary, as well as other directors, went around the pubs every weekend to sell lotto tickets.

“We’d do the pubs every Saturday night,” Mary recalls. “There would be some nights you would think, ‘Oh hell!’, but you would still go out. It was a thankless job but it needed to be done or we would not get funds otherwise.

“One night one man said, ‘What are you doing with the money?’, and I named off all the different projects we did and were doing, and he just was looking at me. I said, ‘You are living in the town and you don’t know what’s going on’. ‘No,’ he says.

“A lot of people wouldn’t have an idea of what we did. They still filled in the envelopes and gave you the money, and that is all you wanted. If we wanted anything we only had to ask and the people responded; they were great. It was hard work going into the pubs and selling tickets, but we did it.”

Good times

Each year the directors would meet and decide what projects needed to be worked on and from there they would look at ways of applying for funding and progress the projects. Maureen said they received a lot of help from council officials at the time such as former county manager, Peter Hynes as well as the former government minister and Mayo TD Pádraig Flynn.

Maureen and Mary both credit Flynn for saving the Newport viaduct when he was minister, as Mayo County Council had planned to knock it down.

“The council sent a petition for it to be knocked, but Mr Flynn said ‘over my dead body’ and got it sandblasted and lit up instead,” explained Mary.

Both Mary and Maureen recently stepped down as directors of NADDCo, but they both have confidence in the new committee under the chairmanship of Martin Dillane to achieve great things in the future.

While not all their plans came to pass, Maureen says that looking back, she has no regrets and would not do anything differently. She believes that the work of NADDCo in those early days gave people the confidence to invest in Newport, making it the thriving town it is today.

“I hate to think what it would be like if we just sat back and didn’t do anything,” she said. “It was a combined effort. The group worked well together, and we felt we were achieving – and we did achieve. We enjoyed working together. There were lots of good times.”