https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4glmyene2yo
Planning permission has been granted for the first student accommodation project in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter.
The project will provide housing for just over 1,000 students on a site next to Belfast Metropolitan College.
The developers, Watkin Jones-Lacuna, are among the most prolific builders of student housing in the city.
Their other projects include the redevelopment of the Athletic Stores building on Queen Street.
'Real demand for student accommodation'
Anthony Best, Managing Director of Lacuna Developments, said the development was responding to demand from students at universities and higher education colleges.
"Belfast is a great city, with a growing knowledge economy that needs students and graduates living here to be successful," he said.
Planning permission has been granted for the first student accommodation project in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter.
The project will provide housing for just over 1,000 students on a site next to Belfast Metropolitan College.
The developers, Watkin Jones-Lacuna, are among the most prolific builders of student housing in the city.
Their other projects include the redevelopment of the Athletic Stores building on Queen Street.
'Real demand for student accommodation'
Anthony Best, Managing Director of Lacuna Developments, said the development was responding to demand from students at universities and higher education colleges.
"Belfast is a great city, with a growing knowledge economy that needs students and graduates living here to be successful," he said.
Image source,WATKIN JONES GROUP AND LACUNA DEVELOPMENTSImage caption,
The Titanic Quarter Student Village will be accessed via the Queen's Road
A substantial amount of student accommodation has been built in Belfast city centre over the past decade.
Those have primarily been on the northern side of the city centre to serve the new Ulster University campus.
An increasing number of projects are under way or planned for southern part of the city, closer to Queen's University.
Image source,Getty ImagesImage caption,
Titanic Quarter skyline
Queens is due to expand its existing operations in the Titanic Quarter with a new Global Innovation Institute set to open next year.
A pre-application consultation exercise for the housing scheme drew a mix of responses with concerns including potential noise impacts on residents of the nearby Arc apartments.
Positive responses included the hope that it would help lead to growth of tourism businesses in the area.
by JeepersOhh
11 comments
Hopefully this is real student accommodation and not what some providers do and apply for student accommodation knowing it’ll get approved, then putting the prices through the roof, claim there isn’t enough demand to sustain it and therefore it needs rezoned for normal tenants.
Queens taking over Belfast with student accomodation this is ridiculous
Is there really this much demand for student accommodation in Belfast?
Someone else has presumably done the sums but I’m shocked there’s this much demand for high-priced student rooms at the moment, and I’m even more shocked that this is forecast to be true over the longer term.
There’s demand for affordable housing, hard to believe student accommodation took priority in Belfast CC’s minds…
I was down towards the new Ulster building for the first time the other day – walked from the centre of town to it and it felt like a small beacon of light in a really rundown end of town. The amount of buildings lying derelict is shocking. It’s hard to argue against the reuse of some of that space – and there’s no shortage of it, with something that might attract people. They should do something similar with apartments and we’d be in a better spot.
ah, they’re going to put something on that big whack of unused land round the side of the Titanic Museum at last?
For fuck sake, it’s another grey facade brick building with rectangle wood frame windows. A decade from now and Belfast will have a lovely copy-paste aesthetic you got from a Soviet Housing estate with a 21st century twist. Actually probably unfair on the soviet blocks, at least they had more room space…
Souless as fuck.
How much is these new student accommodation rooms and got much is private rentals in comparison? I’m totally out of the loop here.
wrong location
will they eventually be rented to non students?
Won’t this lower rents in the city as the housing stock will increase?