Plans for a multi-million-pound Northern Irish version of the Eden Project in Derry are being reconsidered, the team behind the project has said.
The £67 million Eden Project Foyle first emerged five years ago.
It had included plans for walled gardens, tree-top and floating walkways and a water activity centre on a 250-acre site beside the River Foyle.
Plans will now proceed with a “more modest and phased approach”.
“Clearly the current macroeconomic context is not conducive to the feasibility or affordability of a project of this scale and ambition,” Eamonn Deane of the Foyle River Gardens (FRG) said.
In conjunction with the Eden Project in Cornwall, FRG, a charitable trust that would have operated the Derry site, had hoped to secure investment of around £70m for the project.
FRG said those plans have been hampered by the global economic downturn and pressures on public expenditure.
They are also point to difficulties with “regional decision making”.
An artist’s impression of the Eden Foyle Project
In 2020 FRG and the Eden Project International said the project would create around 170 jobs and support a further 2000 plus jobs locally when open.
They said Eden Project Foyle would become “a beacon of cultural tourism and a community asset helping to drive social, economic and environmental regeneration” that would be worth £62m to the local economy annually.
Tags: