ARMAGH GAOL. The challenge of reusing old prisons (Part 2)

Challenges in the implementation process

Such a complex project contains in itself elements that hinder its implementation and sometimes may even prevent it if there are not the necessary plans that help to address these difficulties in such large projects that require cooperation between actors, important investments and a long time for their execution. Among the risks found in the renovation project of the site, we can mention in a first approach:

- The difficulties of ensuring a public, social and private partnership structure that shares common objectives, in equal conditions when carrying out negotiations and subsequent agreements

- The absence of technical teams in small municipalities with the necessary multidisciplinary skills and specially trained in the art of negotiation

- The financial inability of small cities to address the financing of projects of this magnitude

- The ever-present conflict between the priorities of preservation and the use of heritage sites

- The difficulties of integrating the solutions with other needs, plans and related services: traffic, parking, social and private housing...

- The adjustment to the times marked for the implementation

- The lack of flexibility in the renewal plans of the sites subject to a single and exclusive intervention

- The very dynamics of abandonment and almost ruin in which abandoned buildings fall

- The complex constellation of existing risks

- The irruption of many external and collateral effects with unforeseeable impacts such as the economic crisis, the administrative reorganization that has affected the municipalities, Brexit, etc...

Meanwhile, the poor state of the site can be certified, and what is more serious, it can lead to the loss of centrality of the topic and the exhaustion of the actors who are interested in providing solutions.

At first glance it seems necessary to bring to the scene an emergency plan that includes a readjustment of the possible solutions in which flexible and alternative plans and phased measures can be considered. A proposal of actions in successive and interdependent phases developed under public leadership but where local actors - entrepreneurs and community - are committed parts in this re-launching of the old plans. A new updated scenario based on the external situations that have been experienced in recent years but that, even in a scenario of uncertainty, do not prevent being attractive to investors and committed to the Northern Irish public sector and therefore British.

Abandoned prisons, risks and opportunities in new political and social contexts

The project of renovation and redevelopment of the Armagh prison is not unique in a context where the closing of prisons that automatically demand their conservation and reuse is frequent.

Many of them share common challenges linked to the heritage element of buildings, their large dimensions and high investment costs, the need to involve mixed interests and uses or the general connection with the urban ecosystem and other cultural and social resources of the city, without however having a connection with the historical past and the identity of the site.

The way in which these challenges are being addressed shows how, in some cases, social, community and entrepreneurial development proposals are at the forefront of redefining plans and consequent uses, while in others privatization and exclusive transformation into luxury hotels comes to represent another model about how cities face politically the opportunity to reuse common heritage assets. This is a debate that is very present in contemporary urban development.

This type of antagonistic options is reflected again in a case that is being news in the media during these days, in relation to the reuse of an old prison, in the city of Jaén (Spain). The case presents some interesting conclusions to link with the readjustment that the proposal around Armagh prison seems to require. Indeed, in the city of Jaén, after its closure in 1991, the prison building will at least partially host the headquarters of a Museum dedicated to Iberian art. It is an old aspiration of some social groups and institutions of the city. The process has lasted for twenty years and has required the successive intervention of a different team of architects, based on an investment of 27 million euros exclusively public, with a partial opening -500 square meters for a temporary exhibition compared with the 11,152 square meters built - and without a clear management plan at least known to accommodate other possible uses and actors. This vision and its subsequent implementation seem to be in conflict with the privatization proposal that dominates the renovating scenario in Armagh. One case and another do not avoid the questions about sustainability and equity in the sharing of efforts and benefits in one or other proposal, the degree of commitment to the preservation of the real estate, the presence of a clear and public economic management plan or the public and social uses that awaits the site. Looking at both initiatives, we asked ourselves about the opportunity to discover a middle path as an open solution to the desired implementation of a defined strategy and management plan.

We are definitely facing a challenge to which the INT-HERIT network wants to offer its small contribution, in particular by bringing new ideas and suggestions that may gradually and sustainably help to bring answers to the different needs associated with the implementation of the renovation plans of these sites, once places of forced isolation that can now let light pass freely through its bars and windows.

This two parts article has been translated by:

Raquel Moreno Vicente