|
 Who's
the Boss
Business
& Finance 10.8.1999
A
village in Co Cork, which was dying on its feet, has been
brought to life by the vision, energy and money of one
of the country's most energetic business figures.
Report
by Vincent Wall
"It's
like Churchtown has won the lottery," says local
shopkeeper and community worker, Peggy O’Flaherty.
"This village was dying on its feet and now through
the effort, drive and financial support of one of our
own native sons, it's coming to life again."
And
true enough, everywhere one looks in the intense heat
of the North Cork summer, workmen are busy transforming
the face of a once-sleepy hamlet while the air is full
of the sounds of their activity and banter.Over £750,000
has been invested in this community of just 42 houses,
over the past two years, to bring into being, one man's
vision of how a village of this size can not only survive
in an urbanised, high-tech age, but survive with a bit
of a swagger.
The
man in question is Gerry Murphy; a 45-year old native
of Churchtown who has returned to his native heath like
some benign Merlin and waved a transforming wand over
it. The same Gerry Murphy, who is known to most readers
of this magazine as the former operations director of
First National Building Society and who resigned from
that high-powered position on the cusp of its stock market
flotation.
There
were many raised eyebrows when Murphy announced his decision
exactly two years ago and in so doing, turned his back
on the significant financial rewards which the transformation
to First Active would bring.
There
were also many queries as to what he would do and how
he could hope to compensate himself and his family for
the salary and share options he had spurned. Those who
knew him well, recognised he was resourceful and would
do well at whatever business endeavour he turned his hand
to.
That
is how things have turned out. Murphy who has also built
up a sizeable property portfolio of his own has since
acted as a consultant in deals ranging from the Fitzers/Manchester
United restaurant franchise to small local management
buy outs. He has also accepted a broad range of directorships,
the most high profile of which is deputy chairmanship
of the recently floated property company, Sherry Fitzgerald,
in which he is a significant shareholder.
But
few can have foreseen and even fewer are aware of the
extent of his passion for, and commitment to, what can
only be called the 'Churchtown Project' and of the social
and commercial potential he is planning to unleash there.
In
many ways Gerry Murphy didn't know it was going to happen
himself. "I had been watching the slow demise of
the village for the best part of a decade and had wanted
to do something about it, but wasn't sure what action
to take. In the late '70s and '80's a lot of European
money was directed towards rural Ireland from Brussels,
but the vast bulk of it was in the form of agricultural
subsidies and grants and went into farmyards, not villages
and towns.
"As
a result, Churchtown had the look of a village in Eastern
Europe. At least eight of the forty-two houses were either
in severe disrepair or uninhabited, while there was very
little commercial activity to give the rest of the place
a boost."
Murphy
was finally spurred into action, when he read in a Sunday
paper in January 1997, that one of the village's two public
houses had been sold and its fixtures and fittings transported
to Vienna to fit out a new Irish pub in the Austrian capital.
"I
just felt it was time to do something, when I read that
the heritage I grew up with, was being exported. So I
went to Churchtown and bought the old Market House in
the village which was then in a very poor state of repair.
The Market House and many of the other buildings in the
village are constructed of fine cut limestone and were
built during the reconstruction of Churchtown, by Sir
Edward Tierney, the land agent to the local absentee aristocrat,
the Earl of Egmont. The re-building project followed the
damaging of many earlier thatched buildings in Churchtown
during the "Whiteboy" land agitation of the
1820's.
Tierney's
imaginative and benign project - he built a fine schoolhouse
and a Catholic Church in the process - was completed in
1849. The village remains largely unchanged since then,
though until two years ago, obviously in much need of
investment.
Gerry
Murphy had no clear idea what he was going to do with
his new property, but gradually an ambitious social and
commercial blueprint began to take shape in his head;
one which has since utterly transformed his native village.
To
be fair, a local Development Association had been formed
in Churchtown about five years previously, but suffered
as do many voluntary associations in small communities,
from lack of finance and the absence of an external perspective.
To
provide greater focus and financial support for the local
community's own plans, Murphy established the Churchtown
Village Renewal Trust and provided some vital seed capital
for it.
"Not
only did he establish the Trust," says its secretary,
Peggy O’Flaherty, "but he provided much of the
creative input as to what we should do and most importantly
directed us towards the relevant agencies for funding
and dealt with the bureaucracy that inevitably ensued."
The
impact of the Trust's activities are immediately obvious
to the casual visitor to Churchtown. Elegant new name
signs greet travellers on every road into the village,
carrying the address of the community's own dedicated
Internet web site. In the village itself, hanging flower
baskets adorn every building; decorative, cast iron signposts
direct the way to all the local points of interest; those
places of interest (including the old churchyard where
British actor, Oliver Reed was buried earlier this year)
are tastefully marked by copper plaques outlining the
history of the feature in question; village houses which
have not been stripped back to their original limestone
fronts, have new coats of paint while many of the old
shop fronts have been restored or rebuilt.
"We
feel as if the corner has been turned," says Peggy
O’Flaherty. "There's a new confidence to the
place and from a situation where the number of children
in the local school had dropped from over 90 in the 1960's
to less than 40 today, we now have some families beginning
to move here to live. When the Trust's plans were outlined,
two years ago, the reaction was so positive that we were
able to raise £20,000 in the local area by selling a specially-designed
roll of honour to every household in the area."
But
with the former building society executive's guidance,
the Trust's sources of financial support have broadened
considerably. Cork County Council has provided discretionary
grants of £15,000, while the European Union Urban &
Village Renewal Scheme, which the Council administers
has stumped up another £30,000. Progress to the advanced
stages of the AIB Better Ireland awards has won additional
funds, while in an imaginative scheme, the Trust plans
to raffle one of the village's derelict houses as a potential
holiday home, in a limited draw which will raise £30,000
over the next year.
Perhaps
the most impressive evidence of Churchtown's new found
confidence as a community, is the ongoing work taking
place at the old national school. This fine stone building,
situated right beside the Market House purchased by Murphy,
was built by Tierney and was where one of the village's
famous sons, horse trainer, Vincent O' Brien received
his primary school education. Aided by a £45,000 Leader
Scheme Grant, administered by the Ballyhoura Development
Ltd, and a FAS scheme which has up to ten apprentices
working on the site, the school is being transformed into
a rural conference/ multipurpose community centre, which
will provide a focal point to village life and some badly-needed
commercial revenue.
Gerry
Murphy has watched with pride as Churchtown has been transformed.
But the broadly social and communal benefits which have
accrued, form only one strand of his master plan for the
village. He also has ambitious commercial projects in
train. And lest he is in danger of imminent canonisation,
some of these projects are designed to generate some profit
for himself.
"I
looked at the village when I bought the Market House and
I realised that the only long-term sustainable means of
reviving the place, was to create some commercial project
which would not only pay its own way, but also generate
a return on the capital employed.
"Up
to then, there had only been two commercial investments
in the village over the past century; the nursing home
built five years ago by my old school friend, Denis Fehan
and his wife Ann and the creamery built by my own great
grandfather, William Murphy and others, in 1889."
That
same ancestor went by the nickname of Boss Murphy at the
time, and today over a century ago, his entrepreneurial
descendant is in the process of trying to create a global
'Boss Murphy' brand, centred on the village of Churchtown.
"I
don't know when the idea first formed in my head. But
I knew after my first property investment here, that the
most appropriate commercial enterprise would have to be
based on tourism and slowly the notion of a Boss Murphy
Holiday Centre began to take shape."
Before
the end of 1997, he had purchased a number of other properties
close to the Market House, including most significantly
the site of the exported pub, in a building dominating
the village square.
Two year's later and underpinned by a £500,000 BES fund
and a £150,000 Bord Fáilte grant, the Boss Murphy Holiday
Facility is almost ready to open for business. In essence,
it will serve as an up-market hostel (hostels and not
hotels qualify for this type of Bord Fáilte grant support).
The development will provide over 60 beds ranging from
traditional hostel-type dormitories, through self-catering
rooms and family suites, through to luxuriously-appointed
en-suite four-poster bedrooms.
Designed
by a Dublin-based architect, Gerry Cahill, the Centre
comprises an ingenious complex of interlocking spaces,
including the Market House. It incorporates two restaurants,
self-catering kitchens and dining areas and a leisure
centre, which will have its own landscaped courtyard and
outdoor Canadian hot tub.
Between
the Market House and the rest of the facility, the new
Community Centre, owned by the Churchtown Trust, can by
rental agreement with the Boss Murphy Centre, provide
additional accommodation and space for seminars and conferences.
"We
are scheduled to open in early September and already we
are fully booked out for that week," explains Michael
Barry, manager of the Boss Murphy Holiday Centre. "We
are also fully booked out for the National Ploughing Championships
which take place in Castletownroche in October."
Barry,
is not only supervising the final touches to the centre
and preparing to manage it as an ongoing commercial venture,
he is also central to many of Murphy's other plans for
the village and beyond.
A marketing man, who has worked around the world in many
different product sectors, Barry fully believes that the
he and Murphy can create a Boss Murphy brand, incorporating
a broad range of goods and services and generating significant
additional tourism spin-offs for Churchtown.
"I
suppose the kind of concept we are modelling ourselves
on, is that of Jack Daniels in Sleepy Hollow Tennessee.
We're not sure whether a real Jack Daniels ever existed,
but that's beside the point, the concept has now established
itself in the global consciousness and is centred on an
actual place in Tennessee." Whether Murphy and Barry
can do the same for Boss Murphy (who did actually exist
and who bears a remarkable resemblance to his great grandson),
remains to be seen. But it will not be for want of effort,
or imagination.
So,
over the past year or so, a range of Boss Murphy branded
goods have been produced, including a Compact Disc of
traditional County Cork songs and tunes; mugs, T-shirts
and information booklets.
More ambitiously, there are plans afoot to establish a
network of franchised Boss Murphy bars in the United States,
(though a similar venture in Dortmund in Germany failed,
leaving Gerry Murphy nursing six-figure losses and an
ambition to learn from his mistakes next time out.
"Can
you imagine the impact it will have on Americans, when
they visit a Boss Murphy bar in the States and see all
the branded merchandise with which we will stock the pubs.
They'll want to come over here, when they're informed
of where the Boss was from and that he has a very comfortable
holiday complex in his native village, where they can
stay," stresses Murphy with enthusiasm.
Intriguingly,
he also suggests that there are plans to extend the Boss
Murphy brand to other high volume consumer products and
when reminded as to the enormous sums which the likes
of Tony O' Reilly suggest are required to establish and
sustain a consumer brand, merely smiles and says "we'll
see." Whether or not the embryonic brand ever reaches
these wider horizons, Boss Murphy's great grandson has
still more immediate and more concrete plans for Churchtown.
He
is about to submit a planning application to Cork County
Council for up to seventy houses, which he intends to
build on a ten-acre field opposite the Market House and
Boss Murphy Holiday Centre.
"The other projects will take some time to pay for
themselves, but the housing development will have to finance
itself as it goes along. I also intend to use the profit
from the houses, to build a small hotel and leisure complex
on the same site and which should be constructed over
the next three years.
The
houses have already been designed to a high specification
by the same architect, Gerry Cahill and incorporate natural
stone facings, timber cladding and slate roofs to blend
in with the existing 19th century village buildings. A
mixture of terraced, semi-detached and detached units,
they have been designed to allow the owners of the smaller
units to increase the size of the house, by simply building
upwards rather than out. The housing development, if sanctioned
will more than double the population of Churchtown over
the next three years, but seems to have universal approval
with existing residents.
"It'll
bring great life and activity back to the village,"
says Denis Fehan a Churchtown native and the founder of
a thriving stainless steel fabrication facility, employing
200 people in nearby Charleville.
"The
government recently announced plans for a new factory
and 700 jobs for Mallow, less than ten miles away and
with the new road from Mallow to Cork, the city is only
forty minutes away. This is what should be happening elsewhere
in rural Ireland; getting people back to smaller communities
where they can afford decent housing and taking the pressure
off the larger towns and cities."
Gerry
Murphy's commitment to the revival of his native village
has been intensive and has taken many forms. Deep within
the Boss Murphy complex, is situated the computer server
which drives another separate enterprise, George’s
Street Technology. This fledgling, IT firm, in which Murphy
is one of the prime shareholders currently operates a
number of online stockmarket information services, including
its own proprietary, CUB Index, which monitors the fortunes
of ten newly-emerging Irish stocks. George’s Street
Technology has recently become the exclusive provider
of online information about Irish stocks to both the Nasdaq
Exchange in New York and the Yahoo Internet portal.
"We
don't know how far we can drive this down the line, but
it just shows what can be done now with the right technology
and management skills, from a small Irish village,"
muses Murphy.
Not
everything has worked out according to plan for him. Twice,
Bord Failte has turned down an application by the Churchtown
Village Renewal Trust, for his idea of an Indoor Sports
Centre, costing over £300,000 and which would service
a much wider hinterland in North Cork. IDA Ireland has
told him that it is against policy to support his plans
for a major tele-centre in the village, simply because
Churchtown is too small and there are other more pressing
priorities. The ESB and Telecom Éireann have been less
than helpful in his attempts to bury unsightly poles and
cables underground - even when he has offered to pay for
the work himself. Undaunted, he says he will keep applying
for the funds to build the Sports Centre while he now
intends to connect each of the seventy houses he is building,
by ISDN phone lines to a central server, and to organise
a back-office processing project or call centre activity,
among the new residents in their individual houses.
'"The
world is an abundant place,' was one of Boss Murphy's
favourite sayings," Gerry Murphy maintains (though
whether he actually knows this, or whether it forms part
of the growing mythology he is developing for the brand,
is difficult to ascertain and probably doesn't matter),
so why shouldn't' a small community like this benefit
as much as anywhere else." His own personal and business
philosophy is summed up by the lines from George Bernard
Shaw, which introduce the Renewal Trust's, First Annual
Report: "Our lives are shaped not as much by our
experience as by our expectations."
"Every
community of this size needs a champion, and I am fortunate
enough to have had the business experience and the time
flexibility to become Churchtown's champion. I grew up
here, my parents and brothers still farm here, this place
means everything to me and it's wonderful to get the chance
to do something for it."
There
may well be some hidden scepticism about what he is doing
or even about his motives. Some of his plans may not come
to fruition and others may have to be modified to take
account of changing financial circumstances. But Murphy
has succeeded in convincing not just most of his fellow
villagers that there is a brighter future ahead, but also
a more influential range of opinion formers. Enterprise
Ireland boss, Dan Flinter has visited the village and
expressed his admiration, while President McAleese is
scheduled to perform the official opening of the Boss
Murphy complex next summer.
If
you find yourself on the road from Cork to Limerick, close
to Buttevant and Mallow, drop in and judge for yourself
whether Churchtown represents the way forward for rural
Ireland, or whether Murphy should have remained an institutional
corporate man.
[This article, written by editor Vincent Wall, appeared
as the front page story in Business & Finance in its
issue for the week 12-18.8.1999. Business & Finance
is Ireland’s only weekly business magazine and has
been published for 35 years. This article was downloaded
from the www.businessandfinance.ie website and excludes
10 colour photographs.]
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