Word: adamstown
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There's an eerie silence in Adamstown. Between the rows of sleek apartment buildings in this new housing development in suburban Dublin, buses meander the empty streets, searching in vain for passengers to take into the capital. On street corners, pedestrian crossing lights shine brightly, ready to guide residents through the nonexistent traffic...
...Adamstown is one of scores of developments that sprang up across Ireland during the country's boom years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Families and young professionals quickly snapped up properties in what was to be the first complete new "town" to be built in Ireland in more than 20 years. Four years after the construction started, however, the building sites in Adamstown are as quiet as the empty streets. More than 200 properties are either vacant or unfinished, and the shopping center, soccer field and swimming pool promised in the glossy advertising booklets have yet to materialize...
...Philip Cummins, a 26-year-old electrician, bought a three-bedroom home in Adamstown in 2007 at the peak of the property boom. Like many first-time home buyers, he took out a 100% mortgage, which he pays off in monthly installments of $2,400. In the past two years, however, his apartment has dropped in value by nearly half. To make matters worse, he lost his job three months ago and has been unable to find work since. He's by no means alone. Ireland's unemployment rate has doubled in the past year, to 12.5%, and is expected...
...great brass bell across from the Assembly Hall on Pitcairn Island clanged gladly one sundown last fortnight. Through the dim light a ship had just been sighted, and the 200-odd hybrid descendants of H. M. S. Bounty's, mutineers rushed out on Adamstown's headland to strain eyes for their first visitor in over two months...
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