Tribeca Belfast: Company behind stalled project seek progress

The company behind the stalled regeneration of a large part of Belfast city centre has said it is still trying to deliver "a commercially viable development".

Castlebrooke Investments received planning permission for the Tribeca scheme in January 2020.

The development was supposed to regenerate more than 10 acres close to St Anne's Cathedral.

Since then little has happened within the area.

Castlebrooke said "nobody is more frustrated than us at the pace of progress with this scheme".

Belfast City Council and Stormont's Department for Communities (DfC) said they "continue to engage" with Castlebrooke.

The council is responsible for planning matters while DfC has regeneration powers.

Part of the delay in the scheme is understood to concern the use of Writer's Square, a public space opposite St Anne's Cathedral.

DfC said the focus of its conversation with Castlebrooke has been "specifically with regard to how Writer's Square, which is in the ownership of the department, may impact upon Castlebrooke's plans for the Tribeca scheme.

"Conversations to date are considered commercial in confidence at this time."

However, Belfast's Deputy Lord Mayor, Green Party councillor Aine Groogan, told the BBC that she believes the Writer's Square issue is a red herring.

"The idea that an entire 12-acre scheme is dependent on that square, which is not massive, I'm not buying it", she said.

Ms Groogan, who opposed the scheme from the outset, said she has "no confidence" that Castlebrooke will be able to deliver on its plans.

SDLP councillor Carl Whyte, who is deputy chair of the council's planning committee, said the slow progress is "not all the fault of Castlebrooke" and there had been "institutional failure", including a lack of coordination between the council and Stormont departments.

The existing Castlebrooke plan is effectively office-led with plans for 45,000 sq metres of office space, around 360 apartments and a small amount of retail.

At the time planning permission was granted, analysis conducted by the council concluded that "it is highly likely that Belfast will continue to need additional provision of office space to meet demand".

Opponents of the scheme question that, pointing to the decision by Allstate, one of Belfast's biggest employers, to sublet a third of its Belfast office space and the decision by IT firm Kainos to scale back the size of its new HQ in the city.

Plans to redevelop the area covered by Tribeca 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 it 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.