INTERVIEW: Meet the man behind Kildare's most controversial shopping plaza - who started out washing dishes in a hotel in Alaska

It’s a long way from Foxford to Fairbanks - but it’s less than half of Ger Riche’s journey.

The businessman is a native of the County Mayo village and worked for some time in the Alaskan city, which has a population of about 32,000.

He is better known locally as the owner of the Vista Primary Care Centre in Naas and the Naas Shopping Centre, renamed Naas Plaza as well as the refurbished and reopened Forge Inn, which links the main street with the plaza.

Ger was just five years old when he moved with his family - parents Packie and Annie and his five brothers and four sisters.

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The family left their Mayo farm for one in Christianstown, between Rathangan and Milltown. He was the second youngest in the family and two brothers - Michael and John - have passed away.

His family was one of many who moved from the west and south of Ireland to landholdings in places like Kildare and Meath, under a programme launched by the now defunct Land Commission. The Land Commission oversaw the redistribution of agricultural land; people moved into new farms and the holdings they vacated were divided among neighbours with the aim of making these farms more viable.

“We gave up our farm to people who were worse off than us,” he recalls.

He attended national school in Milltown and before his 16th birthday he was working in a bakery in London “mixing the dough.” He’d left school without an Intermediate Cert or a Leaving Cert.

Later, still in the UK, he worked for Wards of Sheffield, an enterprise repairing rail tracks.

He was 17 when he went to the United States, working initially in Maguire’s, a bar in The Bronx where he spent four years.

He then came home and met his wife, Annette and they married n 1976.They stayed for a year and got married.

The couple have five children PJ, Claire, Eoin, Stephen and Eadaoin. Two - Eadaoin and Eoin are helicopter pilots while Claire is a pharmacist.

Stephen and PJ have special needs and Stephen made something of a name for himself in the sporting arena, not to mention bringing great joy to the family by winning gold medals at the Special Olympics in 2007 in Shanghai aa well as gold and silver at the 2003 World Games in Dublin. Claire, then 18, was the Leinster and Dublin Rose in the Rose of Tralee event of 2002.

Ger and Annette take some pride in the achievements of their children and the businesses operate under the Roche Group umbrella, which is a family enterprise.

The couple returned to New York but there were few work opportunities because of the recession.

“I signed up for the Vietnam draft. The war was over but the draft remained in place for some time afterwards and I never actually went to the conflict. When I became a US citizen, the first question that was asked was if I had signed up. This helped in terms of me getting citizenship.

Though proudly Irish first and foremost, the family are also US citizens. Three of the children were born in America and the other two - Stephen and Eadaoin - were entitled to citizenship because of the status of the parents.

“Effectively we could claim them as citizens.”

He also spent ten years in Alaska rising from the bottom to the very top of a huge hotel enterprise.

Ger Roche

Ger’s first job with the Northwood Operating Corporation.

"I started washing dishes in the hotel, I worked as a maintenance man and climbed the whole way to the top and also managed sister hotels.”

The hotel in Fairbanks also had 350 apartments, a bank, hair salon  and shops. The complex provided everything most people could wish for in terms of services.

“It covers the whole city block and people didn’t have to leave the hotel,” he said, adding that he flew the Irish flag from the building.

“I loved Alaska, especially in the summer even though it was as cold as minus 42 degrees in winter. I developed an interest in skiing and was good enough at it. I did it every Sunday for ten years. That’s all I did in Alaska, apart from work because there’s not much to do there.”

Alaska is the biggest state in the US. It’s 19 times the size of Ireland and twice as large as Texas.

Many people were working on the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline system, which is 800 miles long and four feet in diameter running from Prudhoe Bay in the north to Valdez, on the Gulf of Alaska. Some were from Ireland and Ger also employed some of them in the hotel.

“It was a hard land but you got used to it. There was big money to earned on the pipeline and I got to know a lot of Irish people.”

In all, he was 20 years in the US, ten years in Alaska and another ten between New York and Boston.

On his return to Ireland he was initially involved in building construction in Galway.

“I got into house building and house rebuilding. I bought some properties which needed to be renovated, rebuilt them and sold them. He spent some four years there, a lot of in Gort.

After that the family bought and operated a farm at The Swan/Wolfhill in Co Laois but not before “I got the itch to go back to the US but I couldn't settle there.”

He was to return to building in Galway, this time building apartments.

Eventually in the mid 1990s he sold the farm and bought a site in Naas where the Vista Primary Care Centre was to be established.

The ambitious forward seeing project cost some €25m. It opened in 2008 and this was followed by a severe economic downturn.

“The recession came and the world effectively fell apart. I had to sit down with my accountants and try to buy the enterprise and as of today I own it.”

But the project for which he is best known is the Naas Shopping Centre.

The shopping centre plan was launched by other well known  local developers and was originally due to open at the end of 2009, five years after the then developers lodged the original planning application. Originally it was envisaged that Dunnes Stores would be the anchor tenant and there was provision for 747 car park spaces.

But nothing much happened and in 2015 Kildare County Council reassured politicians and residents that the three cranes towering over the structure were safe. KCC said the cranes are inspected regularly and safety certs are being provided. The cranes were eventually removed in 2018 at a reported cost of €120,000.

About a year later the National Asset Management Agency appointed top finance house Duff & Phelps as receiver in a move which was regarded as a lead-in to putting the premises up for sale. The premises was placed on the market by Cushman & Wakefield in 2019 and bought in 2020 by Roche Group.

“It cost €5m and I’ve put another €5m into it since then. There is no anchor tenant as of now; but I’m convinced that one will come.”

And the Forge Inn, with three function rooms, reopened earlier this year.

In the meantime, he says, in the region of 300 car parking spaces are due to open shortly with another 300 spaces to follow on.