A new £2.5 million music venue, which its owners hope will become a major music location to rival Dublin, opened last weekend in Tramore, Co Waterford, with sell-out concerts by DJ Paul Oakenfold and Paul Weller.
The feedback from the first weekend has been extremely positive, said Mr Paul Jackman, a local businessman and one of the shareholders in the new venue, named South.
Locals involved in the project were invited to South on Saturday night, an event which generated £4,500 for local charities, he said.
The venue is a 30,000 sq ft building, on the site of the failed tourist venture Celtworld, 500 yards from the beach in Tramore. Before its transformation as a dance and entertainment location, the site had been idle since 1998. The sound-proofed facility, which was bought for just under £50,000, has a capacity of 2,200, according to its owners.
In the coming months, the venue will host Aslan, The Divine Comedy, the Waterboys, and, hopefully, Ash, said Mr Mick O'Keeffe, the venue's promoter and one of its owners.
At the weekend, buses brought concert-goers to and from Waterford, said Mr O'Keeffe, and there are plans to extend the service to other towns in the region such as Dungarvan, Kildare and Wexford.
Mr Jackman said he hopes there will be links between the venue and local activities. The area could be marketed as a "different class of a weekend" than going to Dublin, with the entertainment venue linked to other local activities. The facility is owned by Ambient Catering Ltd, which has four directors: Mr Vince Power, head of the Mean Fiddler organisation and a native of Tramore; Mr Paul Jackman, a local businessman; Mr Mick O'Keeffe, who was managing director of the Mean Fiddler in London and originally from Co Waterford; and Mr John Reynolds of the PoD nightclub in Dublin.
The venue, however, has received some local criticism. A Progressive Democrats member of Tramore Town Commission, Mr Michael Flynn, last August said Tramore was in danger of becoming "a tacky Irish Ibiza". He said he received a number of calls of support from locals.
However, Mr Jackman said the area can absorb the influx of concert-goers, bringing more business to the town. A night out in Tramore would also be "considerably cheaper" than Dublin, he said.
This is not the first time there was a large concert venue in the area. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were two ballrooms in the area, The Atlantic and The Silver Slipper, whose combined capacity was 2,400, said Mr Jackman. The failed Celtworld venture, which cost £4 million, was opened in 1992, but closed three years later having received £1.8 million in EU grants.