Belfast’s Linen Quarter Business Improvement District reveals plans to make over more of the city’s neglected areas

Belfast city center has been making the news lately for all the wrong reasons. However, there are plans afoot in a bid to make those headlines a thing of the past.

ver in the city’s historic Linen Quarter, the area’s Business Improvement District (BID) has been working to improve the area and boost tourism, giving some of our neglected streets a much-needed makeover.

The Belfast Telegraph heard from Chris McCracken, managing director of the BID, about the team’s vision over the next five years.

Linen Quarter BID is a non-profit body — funded through the public and private sector, as well as charities and community organizations — that is governed by a board of directors. It works with scores of businesses in the area, pulling funds together to inject back into things such as street cleanliness, parklets and planting schemes.

Since 2018, the Linen Quarter BID has poured some £2.8m into the area, perhaps most notably the FLAXX outdoor social space on Brunswick Street, and in January the body will hope to be voted in for another five-year term.

The Belfast Telegraph took a walk around the Linen Quarter with Mr McCracken to hear about the team’s plans for the future.

Ambitious to say the least, the group will not just be focusing on the Linen Quarter, but also has plans to extend their work to the Gasworks and Shaftesbury Square areas.

Linen Quarter BID hopes to pump around £4m into projects over the next five years.

Due to issues surrounding anti-social behavior and drug taking in the area, the body has also been working on a personal alarm initiative for business key holders and has launched a pilot with the charity Extern to support the reduction of drug use.

Speaking from beside the FLAXX social space, Chris said the team has taken over a section of Brunswick Street as part of the “reimagining” of Belfast city center.

“It’s in line with Belfast City Council thinking of creating more outdoor spaces and hospitality. We’ve laid out a 43-metre deck, creating one of the most vibrant outdoor social spaces in Belfast,” he explained.

“We have a container turned Greek restaurant, games at the back, and a stage where we can hold music events.”

In terms of the challenges of anti-social behaviour, drug taking and street cleanliness, Chris says the Linen Quarter BID is there to enhance and add value to services, while it is up to the PSNI and city council to invest in resources to tackle these problems.

“We have been liaising with both of those organizations, because the current resources are not enough to tackle the challenges facing the city center.

“Our voice has been heard and more investment is happening and we hope to see improvement in this area in the weeks and months ahead.

“We will support this with the extra policing in the area that we are investing in, alongside our cleansing teams.”

Chris says the team hopes to extend their work to the Gasworks and Shaftesbury Square areas, which are in dire need of investment.

“We’ll be hitting the ground running and making some significant improvements.

“The Gasworks is a nice area, but it is a bit sterile, so we’ll be animating the look of it, including an eco-garden.

“Around Blackstaff Square we’re putting in a planning application for a £500,000 upgrade.

“The good thing about the Business Improvement District is that we have our own source of funding, so we’re not always going to public agencies asking for help.

“We can do things and we can deliver, but we work closely with all the stakeholders and certainly leverage investment in order to make things happen.”

Asked if, 10 or 15 years down the line, residents and visitors can expect a very different center, Chris said “absolutely”.

“The ethos that we’re following is all about incremental improvements. In Belfast, we’ve been good at the big projects but not so much the day-to-day stuff and those small improvements that go together to make transformational change.

“That’s where the BID comes in. We do small projects, but we do them every year. And over the space of five years, over the space of ten years, the city will be a completely different place. I think that, over the next five or ten years, the city center will be fundamentally transformed.”

Belfast: In Focus – As a city with a long history of reinventing itself, in 2022 Belfast is once again under pressure to clean up its act and fulfill its potential as a thriving hub for residents and visitors alike. The Belfast Telegraph investigates the challenges facing the city, shines a light on the projects and policies moving it forward, and envisages the Belfast of the future.

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