After a shaky start, the Titanic Quarter, a multi-million euro development in Northern Ireland is moving full steam ahead, marrying Belfast's historical legacy with its future potential, writes FRANCESS McDONNELL.
THERE ARE few places that if you close your eyes and try to ignore the sounds of modern day life you can almost imagine yourself floating back in time.
The Thompson Dry Dock in east Belfast is one of those places. The 850ft dry dock took 500 men more than five years to construct at a cost equivalent to around €60 million today.
When it was first opened in 1911 it marked another major first for Belfast as it was the largest dry dock in the world. Today the Thompson Dry Dock and its nearby pump-house are famous simply because of its connection to one of the world's most unfortunate ships, the Titanic - it is where the Titanic and her sister ships were built.
It is a place of history, dreams and aspirations but today it is also a place which marries Belfast's great maritime heritage with ambitious plans for its future as part of the Northern Ireland Science Park (Nisp).
Nisp was created in 1999 to develop a self sustaining, internationally recognised knowledge-based science park in Northern Ireland.The 23-acre site is part of Titanic Quarter in east Belfast which itself is an 85-acre development site - which was once part of Harland & Wolff.
The Nisp, which aims to act as a commercial and research driven centre for knowledge-based industries, will cost more than £73 million (€92 million) to develop - with £25 million (€32 million) of public money committed to it to date.The science park is scheduled to be completed by 2010 by which time it is hoped to have developed more than 400,000 sq ft and created more than 3,000 jobs.
The park boasts Tier One internet and Telephony Gateways and carrier-independent infrastructure.
The science park's three signature buildings which currently include the Innovation Centre, the Legacy Building and White Star House are equipped with Category Six cabling chiefly through a raised floor installation.
White Star House overlooks the iconic Thompson Dry Dock which according to the chief executive of Nisp, Prof Norman Apsley is a powerful link to the past.
"Both the dock and pump house are masterpieces of Edwardian engineering and provide great inspiration for the Science Park's hi-tech occupants who are reclaiming Queen's Island's reputation as a hotbed for ingenuity and industry," he says.
Citigroup, one of the world's largest financial services companies, currently leases White Star House.The American-owned group first came to Northern Ireland four years to set up a technology centre in the Nisp.
The company, which plans to have 560 employees in Belfast by the end of next year, says its experience in Northern Ireland to date has been very positive.
More than 90 per cent of the people who work for Citigroup are graduates and more than a third of them are postgraduates.
The group has consistently praised the people it employs in Belfast and described them as "some of the best talent out there".
Citigroup's workforce in Belfast are helping make the company a global success - not unlike Harland & Wolff's workforce did more than a century ago.
At one stage more than 30,000 people were employed in Harland & Wolff who, at the time, was a world leader in shipbuilding.
Its powerful cranes, locally known as David and Goliath, still dominate the Belfast skyline and there is a pride associated with Harland & Wolff and what it achieved. It may be remember for building the Titanic, but as people in Belfast still like to point out "there was nothing wrong with that ship when it left us".
Today on the site where huge ships were designed and constructed, where it took thousands of men to complete one project, a handful of people are completing ground-breaking projects for clients across the globe.
Microsoft, the biotechnology company XenoSense, GE Healthcare and Sugarcube Limited are just four of a number of growing global firms who have chosen to locate and invest in Nisp. Now thanks to the new cross-border initiative, more new jobs in the financial services sector could also be located in the science park.
Last month the Northern Ireland's finance minister and first minister designate Peter Robinson and Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced an initiative which could allow companies based in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) to establish subsidiaries in the Nisp.
The initiative revolves around a deal to enable companies to enjoy the more attractive tax benefits available in the Republic while taking advantage of a ready and waiting workforce in the North.
It is a move which has attracted widespread support in the North even if many people are not yet convinced how the initiative will exactly play out.
According to Philip McDonagh, chief economist with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the proposed initiative would allow companies to enjoy the best of both worlds.
"This is an important development because it would give Northern Ireland the chance to create a cluster of companies specialising in the financial services sector in the Nisp.
"This in turn would encourage other investors to look to Belfast as a location and bring more added value jobs here. These are exactly the kind of jobs we need to create now - we need to create the right kind of jobs for talented, skilled graduates who perhaps feel they have to leave at the moment to get the job they want," McDonagh said. Although the Nisp is an important component of Titanic Quarter, it is just one element of the 185-acre site which is currently under development.
Mike Smith is the chief executive of Titanic Quarter Limited - a sister company of Republic headquartered Harcourt Developments.
It intends to transform the site into an ambitious £1.4 billion (€1.76 billion) development over the next 15 years.
Smith has suggested that up to 20,000 jobs could be created over 15 years as what effectively was wasteland is transformed into a dynamic new quarter of Belfast.The land, which was formerly leased to Harland & Wolff for shipbuilding purposes, is formally owned by the Belfast Harbour Commissioners.However, Dublin-based Harcourt has acquired the development rights for the Titanic Quarter in a deal with the Harbour Commissioners.
The sheer scale of the development project makes the Titanic Quarter the biggest construction site in Northern Ireland at the moment and one of the biggest regeneration projects in Europe at this time.
Smith says the blueprint for the quarter envisages taking a part of the city which is rich in history and potential and creating a new future for it. The plans for Titanic Quarter include developing more than 5,000 apartments and creating some 180,000 sq m of business, education, office and research and development floor space.
There are also ambitious proposals to create the chance to present a range of new lifestyle choices for this part of the city by developing hotels, restaurants, cafes, bars and other leisure uses. Planning permission has also just been launched for the 600,000 sq ft second phase of the Financial Services Centre in Titanic Quarter.
The development has created a new buzz in a long neglected part of the city.
The demise of Harland & Wolff and the subsequent economic fall out from the impact of hundreds of redundancies removed a certain amount of pride from east Belfast.
But the Titanic Quarter development has been embraced not just in this part of the city but across Belfast. It is fast becoming an integral part of open top bus tours as famous as the Falls or Shankill part of the trip.
The new quarter has also captured the imagination of fans further a field. Last year when the first phase of the "Arc" residential development was released, more than 350 apartments were sold off plan.
Prospective buyers from across the globe including the Republic, the United States and Australia all registered an interest in the apartments.The only problem Titanic Quarter appears to have run up against to date involves its proposals to create a tourist attraction known as the Titanic Signature Project.
This was a £100 million (€126 million) proposal to create a full-scale model of the liner, exhibition galleries with a hotel and conference centre on the site. It was planned to have the attraction up and running by 2012, the 100th anniversary of the ship's launch. However, the proposed tourist attraction failed to attract the funding and its future is now in jeopardy.
It recently emerged that Belfast City Council may invest £10 million (€12.6 million) of rate payers money to save it, but no decision has been reached yet.The pace of development in Titanic Quarter has been rapid, each month the site develops a new identity, new pieces of the jigsaw which is its future begin to emerge and it is fast attracting new fans.
The Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg appears to be one of them. During a visit to Belfast to take part in the US:NI Investment Conference earlier this month, he saw part of the site and helped launch a new financial services sector at Titanic Quarter.
He said he was extremely impressed with Titanic Quarter. "There is a great buzz and excitement about Belfast and it is great to see the investment being made in this city and to hear that the economy here is on the up and up," Bloomberg added.
