Unemployment has dropped to 6 per cent and the young have their pick of the jobs. Is this a shining example of the peace dividend, asks Kathy Sheridan.
Ten years ago, Newry - a town the size of Derry - lacked a single hotel or even a hinterland. Battered by bombings and shootings, two of its hotels had been bombed out and the third closed down.
Worse, it would feature among the North's darkest days, when in one atrocity, nine policemen were murdered.
For 50 years, says solicitor Ciaran Rafferty, a Newry native, the town had felt disenfranchised from Stormont and partitioned from Dundalk, its natural hinterland.
It had four excellent grammar schools, but was second only to Strabane in the league of UK unemployment blackspots.
Then, around 10 years ago, Newry's renaissance began.
The single market banished the Border; the town declared itself a euro zone; and for the first time, its location - an hour from both capitals - began to work in its favour.
Now, it boasts a fine hotel on the river, two huge shopping centres, a brand new Cineplex and an Italian restaurant - "that would have been unheard of five years ago" - while bleak housing estates have been reborn from the combined efforts of the public and private sector.
Unemployment is down to 6 per cent, the young have their pick of jobs and exiles are returning from England to raise their families.
So is Newry a shining example of a peace dividend? Rafferty says that's always difficult to say, but it could hardly have prospered amid continuing conflict.
But is it the fruit of two communities working in harmony?
Hardly. The Newry of 2004 is 95 per cent Catholic. No one seems quite sure what this means.
Could it be the story of the new North?