Business

Planners approve 'grand' £30m Belfast hotel conversion

An artist's impression of the Grand Central Hotel 
An artist's impression of the Grand Central Hotel  An artist's impression of the Grand Central Hotel 

PLANS to convert Belfast's tallest building into a four-star luxury hotel have been given the official go-ahead by Belfast City Council's planning committee.

And it means work can begin immediately on transforming Windsor House in Bedford Street into the re-envisaged Belfast Grand Central Hotel.

Metamorphosing from bland 1970s office block to grandiose 24-storey complex - with upper floor office space, 16 serviced apartments and ground floor retail units - requires a £30 million investment by the Hastings Group. which paid £6m for the building in May.

Rising to 260-feet high, the property dominated the Belfast skyline since opening in 1975, with past tenants including the remnant of the British-Irish Joint Secretariat as well as the Parades Commission and employees of the north’s main tax office.

The new hotel - named with a nod to the original Grand Central in Royal Avenue - is expected to bring up to 150 new jobs in the hospitality sector when it opens in 2018.

Howard Hastings, managing director of Hasting Hotels, said the hotel was now on track to start work on site early next year.

"This is good news, not only for Hastings Hotels, but for all other potential investors in the city," he said.

Operating at the upper end of the four-star market, the new-look property will also include a range of high-end offices covering 25,000 sq ft over the top five floors.

Chairman of the council's planning committee, Councillor Matt Garrett, said approval reflected the growing demand for hotel bed space in the city centre.

"From next year, there will be a huge increase in the number of business delegates travelling to Belfast to use the expanded conference facilities at Belfast Waterfront, and potentially returning again as leisure visitors,” he said.

"It is now vital that we provide enough high quality accommodation to meet this demand."

Latest Visit Belfast figures show that hotel occupancy rates in Belfast have reached record levels, with an average occupancy rate of 80.4 per cent from January to August - almost five per cent up on the previous year.

The north only provides about 8,000 bedrooms compared to 60,000 in the Republic, and at least 1,500 more rooms are needed by 2020 if the region is to meet targets set in the latest tourism strategy, which envisages spend doubling from its current £460m level.

Among the other applications approved at this week's planning meeting was a new six-storey office development for All-State NI, adjacent to Maysfield Leisure Centre and Central Station.

The scheme, which includes a new Belfast Bikes docking station, is understood to create a further 200 new jobs for the city in the IT sector.