BREAKING: New Kildare recreation and sports facility to open at the end of the month
It's built on a former landfill site that cost millions to make safe
The long-awaited Kerdiffstown Park amenity on the outskirts of Naas will be available to the public from the end of the month.
However this will be a "soft opening” or unofficial event.
Kildare County Council intends to formally launch the park around St. Brigid’s Day next year.
KCC indicated in March that the project was in the final stages of development “and it was hoped substantial completion would be reached in the coming weeks and at that stage, full running of the park and landfill management would move from the contractor to KCC for final preparations for the park to open.”
Most of the remediation works were completed, ahead of project time, toward the end of 2023 with a small number of works outstanding.
Final commissioning and checks of the landfill infrastructure have been carried out since then.
However KCC indicated in July that this last phase of the final checks on the landfill infrastructure “is taking time due to the complexity of this type of work.”
A specialist was recruited to deal with landfill gas management ”and to assist the contractors own landfill gas specialist.”
The council’s plan was to provide an amenity park with a multi-sports facility. The original proposal envisaged vehicle/pedestrian/cycle entrances, public walkways and informal tracks, a car park with 100 spaces and an overspill car park.
There will also be changing rooms (4), toilets, a storeroom, bicycle parking and fencing.
The estimated overall project cost was €30m-€40m.
It was formerly a dump site that was closed down on foot of court order in 2011 after a series of internal fires within mounds of waste sent smoke and smells into the atmosphere.
This was followed by a multi-million euro clean-up operation.