Fifteen parks and popular facilities across the borough could soon be offering visitors a little extra – with coffee and catering on the cards.
Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council has launched a timely tender ahead of the tourist season to address an obvious shortfall at many locations.
While some areas already have facilities on hand, others do not – or certainly nothing ‘official’.
But that seems about to change.
For the local authority has identified a total of 15 popular locations, from Keady to Loughgall, and Armagh to Lurgan, where it wants to employ the services of mobile vendors to offer barista style coffee and cold food mobile catering services.
And 14 of these areas also feature in a separate tender where it is also hoped to appoint traders to deliver ‘ice-cream and confectionery mobile catering services’.
Common to both tenders, interested parties can bid to provide facilities at up to four ‘lot’ locations and multiple tenders will be accepted.
The selected locations which council is hoping to secure traders for includes Loughgall Country Park, Carnage Forest Park at Keady and Ardmore Recreation Centre in Armagh.
Others would be located at Tannaghmore Gardens and Tannaghmore Farm, Portadown People’s Park, Lurgan Park, Scarva Park, Edenvilla Park, Dromore Public Park, Kernan Playing Fields, Corbet Lough, Moneypenny’s Lock, Maghery Country Park and Verner’s Bridge.
The ice-cream and mobile confectionery applies to the same locations for coffee and cold food catering, with the exception of Loughgall Country Park.
The deadline for the receipt of tenders for both is early in February, with the hope of having services in place as soon as possible.
According to the tender details: “The successful traders will be confined to trading from a designated location within each awarded site. The successful tenders, when awarded, will not be transferable to other ABC Council locations.”
When awarded, the tenders – initially at least – are in place for a two-year period.
