In June, the arts and community centre put out an expression of interest for a new operator.
In May, residents of Ballymun learnt that the café in the Axis arts centre was to close, with immediate effect.
The closure was a total shock to staff and customers, said Erica Kiernan, a local activist who started the now-2,464-signature-strong "Save the Axis Café – Fund Our Community" petition.
But in the last few weeks, there has been a renewed sense of hope that all is not lost, said Councillor Conor Reddy of People Before Profit on Thursday.
In late June, Axis announced that it was seeking expressions of interest from people interested in operating the café.
The new operator would have to offer "High quality meals, snacks and refreshments throughout the day", bar service in the evening, catering for conferences at the centre, and meals for kids in the creche there.
That call is closed now. There's a “cautious optimism” among locals about what happens next, says Reddy.
They're cautious because it's not certain what exactly, if anything, will come from the expressions of interest process yet, he says. Also, the community wants an offering similar to what was there previously, he says.
“We want a community-focused café where prices are affordable, and anyone commercial that's coming in, that might run against their interests,” he says.
There are concerns that the bar – which operates in the same area as the café, but only in the evenings when theatre shows are on – will become the focus of any third-party operator, as it is more profitable than the café.
Members of the Axis board have assured Reddy that this wouldn’t be the case, he says.
Ray Yeates, arts officer for Dublin City Council and Axis board member, also said that nothing is certain yet.
The café was losing money, and was closed so that the board could review all options, said Yeates on Thursday.
“There’s no guarantee, even if an operator comes in, that they will necessarily do any better, but they may manage it in a different way," he said.
People who run arts and community centres aren’t necessarily café people, he says. “Maybe a café person would do better.”
In May, after news had broken of the café's closure, Kiernan had organised a public meeting.
A crowd of café regulars met with Declan Dunne, the voluntary chair of the Axis board, and Sorcha Keane, the facilities director and CEO.
Dunne said the reality was that the café – whose staff were employed directly by Axis – had been operating at a significant financial loss for several years. It couldn't continue, said Dunne.
Last year, the Axis experienced an overall loss of around €200,000, Keane said at the time. “The café is the lion’s share of that.”
A spokesperson for the Axis later said by email that the café had been “impacted by rising operational costs, including utilities and insurance, alongside ongoing cost-of-living pressures affecting customer spending”.
After all that, Reddy says he started a conversation with Eilish Davenport, founder of the Ballymun Food Forum and Learn Local Cookery, which promotes food education.
They kicked around ideas to bring some type of co-operative or social enterprise to the Axis, he says.
“Where it'd be food education, and linking into community-supported agriculture and the different farms in North County Dublin,” he says.
He points to Duhallow Community Food Services in Cork as an example.
Set up in 1997, Duhallow Community Food Services offers “a subsidised meal service to those that are not able to cook for themselves and are isolated because of age, illness, lack of transport or other disadvantages that result in living in a rural area”, its website says.
It also runs a restaurant and provides meals to local schools, sourcing ingredients from mainly local suppliers, it says.
If a commercial body doesn’t grab the contract, this is just the kind of community-focused operation that locals would like to see move into the Axis café space, Reddy says.
Anybody bidding for the space will benefit from the fully equipped kitchen that's already there, so they won't have the costs of starting from scratch as they may if they moved into a white box, he said.
Yeates says that now the expressions of interest are in, they have to be studied. “Because the person making the expression of interest may not understand all of the costs involved.”
Back in May, attendees of the public meeting told Dunne and Keane that they felt the board needed more local representation. They may be about to get their wish.
Next Wednesday, the Axis will hold its AGM and it's expected, says Reddy, that himself, Erica Kiernan and Sinn Féin Councillor Leslie Kane will be elected onto the board.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
