New plan for controversial Belfast 'Tribeca' scheme

The owners of the controversial Tribeca redevelopment scheme in central Belfast have proposed a new plan which is focused on housing.

Castlebrooke Investments has owned the large site next to St Anne's Cathedral since 2016 but has made little progress with it.

The area has become increasingly derelict and there has been calls for the scheme to be taken into public ownership.

Castlebrooke has now filed a pre-application planning notice proposing 1,000 new homes and two hotels.

The Tribeca name has also been dropped.

An experienced property consultant, Gerry Hughes, has been appointed to lead the project.

He said that the project is now centred on the North Street/Donegall Street area being "reimagined as a new place to live in Belfast city centre".

"Our goal is to create a special neighbourhood with a range of new homes that help meet the housing needs of the city and contribute to Belfast City Council's targets for city centre living," he added.

Plans to redevelop the area which lies between the cathedral and Royal Avenue have made little progress in the last 20 years.

A retail-led scheme called Royal Exchange scheme was first proposed by a different developer in 2006.

It was granted planning permission, but stalled because of the property crash.

In 2016, the scheme was sold to Castlebrooke by the Cerberus investment fund which had control of the loans underlying the properties.

Castlebrooke got planning permission for an office-led scheme in 2020 but the rise of working from home made that plan increasingly unviable.

Last year the company sold some of its properties to Belfast city council.

The council paid around £3m for the historic Assembly Rooms and some adjacent properties.

Castlebrooke said its new plan would create a new street and a number of alleyways and public spaces to link the neighbourhood into the wider city centre street network.

It also envisages a "revitalised" Writers' Square, a public space directly opposite the cathedral.

The use of Writers' Square has been a point of contention between Castlebrooke and Stormont's Department for Communities which owns it.

Castlebrooke will hold an in-person public consultation event on 30 June and 1 July at the Masonic Hall on Rosemary Street.

It is then intending to submit a full planning application before the end of this year