A special meeting of Kildare County Council yesterday considered proposals for a major new town-centre development in the north of the county, embracing Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth.
Councillors from north Kildare are supporting plans for a comprehensive new town centre on a 90-acre site at Collinstown which is located within the triangle embracing the three towns.
The site is on the western edge of Leixlip, about 3km north of Celbridge and 4km east of Maynooth.
A proposed new station on the Maynooth commuter rail line would serve the centre, which is also linked to the M4 by a high-quality dual carriageway.
The site is adjacent to the giant Intel and Hewlett Packard plants, which employ thousands of people who have no high-street shopping or recreational facilities.
The 2002 census recorded a total population of over 40,000 between the three towns.
However, the council is also considering a rival plan for a major town-centre development to be located at an unspecified site in Maynooth.
Of the three towns Maynooth, with the lowest population, currently has the highest level of retail provision, with Leixlip and Celbridge poorly served.
As the council debated the issues yesterday, a spokesman for the consortium involved in the Collinstown submission said the Maynooth plan would fail to reverse the shopping outflow from Celbridge and Leixlip to Dublin.
He also said it would compound the existing traffic congestion in the Maynooth area and threaten the historic fabric of this planned university town.
"North-east Kildare, and the people of Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth, need much more than another large retail box with a giant surface car-park.
"The Collinstown plan is for much more. It would be a comprehensive new town-centre development, with a wide range of badly needed recreational and social facilities," the spokesman said.
In addition it would regenerate Leixlip town centre which is suffering from poor retail provision, and lack of car-parking and public investment, he said.
The consortium, which includes Bennett Construction, Castlekeel Development and Collinstown Stud, spelled out their plans in a detailed submission to Kildare County Council.
The consortium said the new centre could offer a new railway station on the Galway-Dublin line which runs through the site; a park-and-ride facility; a QBC corridor and bus interchange; road connections, to the new Celbridge/Leixlip Interchange on the M4, and High Street retail facilities to rival those in Dublin, Liffey Valley and Blanchardstown.
Backers of the plan believe that the Collinstown plan would provide a range of "high-quality lifestyle facilities to serve the cosmopolitan needs of the workforces at Intel and HP and others, and strengthen the attractiveness of North Kildare for more foreign direct investment", according to the consortium spokesman.
