The success of the Pride of Place on 3rd September was about how every community group came together to explain how each group was making a special contribution to our growing town. The Lusk For Life Town Centre First plan was central to our Pride of Place presentation to the judges. Lusk For Life provides the roadmap to address the community and sports infrastructural challenges that the town will face over the coming decade.

We can all see the current explosion in housing in our town and this is the forerunner to significant increased population, so the pressure is on to get new and additional facilities to serve our town. Minister Joe O’Brien recently announced €77,000 expenditure towards designing a skatepark project and undertaking a feasibility study for farmer’s market project for the town. While these are welcome Town Plan project steps, we need to maintain the pressure to deliver more community facilities, faster and in line with best practice sustainable principles. If we do not, we will not stay on target for what our increasingly diverse and expanding community needs.

The lesson of Pride of Place was how the power of working together can deliver a coherent brand for Lusk. Lusk For Life involved coming together to create a Town Centre First Plan. Implementing the plan is a bigger challenge that requires working together to deliver our infrastructure. We need to use our Town Team as well as our Community and Business Pillars to channel our priorities to bring about positive change for Lusk.