A NI tourist board advert … Oh wait … BANGOR ON SCRAPHEAP
Seaside resort becoming derelict wasteland despite gaining city status
by middleway
A NI tourist board advert … Oh wait … BANGOR ON SCRAPHEAP
Seaside resort becoming derelict wasteland despite gaining city status
by middleway
30 comments
Bangor has always been on the scrapheap. My brother in law married a girl from there 25 odd years ago and his whole family was on about how fancy it was. They bought a house in an apparently great neighborhood, then went up during the summer and it might as well been the village with all it’s flegs including terrorist flags. Bangor is a sectarian shithole occasionally cosplaying as a respectable town.
I spent half my growing up in Bangor, and honestly when I left (2015) it was really starting to get like this already. So many shops closed down, just buildings left empty, especially around the seafront and Main Street. I feel like High Street has _maybe_ had a little more attention when I’ve visited? But it is a shame. I think losing Eason’s was a blow as well.
You say that like it wasn’t always a hole? 90% of towns in NI are…
Lisburn went the same way shortly after being named a city, it is almost as if the increased parking, rents and rates that came with becoming a city were an issue
Ah yes because becoming a city stops places becoming derelict, right?
Rule 3: Please copy/paste entire content from… oh…
I honestly could never fathom how Bangor got city status. I’ve been in it only a few times over the last 10 years and even I’m stunned at how wasteland it looks. Anybody with a bit of vision and funding could surely turn it around again.
City
Bangor was a hole well before it became a city. Building bloomfields ruined the town centre along with decades of mismanagement by the council.
Last year one Sunday I said let’s go for a drive. We went down toward Bangor. I’d not been in Bangor for years. We got there…..drove through a ghost town….and drove home. Didn’t bother to get out of the car because there was nothing to get out for. The place is desolate.
Too many cars and car parks.
I worked there years ago in the main street and I think then the rents and rates were 1k a week 😳
Needless to say that shop didn’t last that long .
More life in Ards these days, which isn’t saying much but it’s a hell of a reversal of fortune.
Never mind. There’s still Portrush.
That was the biggest I don’t visit and havnt a fucking clue of a what a dump I’m crowning ever
One of the biggest tourist attracting places and it’s looks like a troubles era dump what are they looking authenticity?
Disgraceful that it was allowed to go into such a shit hole like wtf Is stephen dunne doing for the place 😒
Flagshit centre may not turn into expensive apartments ether fs
Bangor centre is really designed for Weekender or day trips from Belfast pre 1960/70s with a bit of a focus on serving actual residents through some retail led developments.
But since then there is no tourism, the 1960s were… 55-60 years ago. and Bangor went all in for out of town shopping centres killing centre retail.
What is the solution? It isn’t looking backwards to tourism – the likes of Portrush and Portstewart are doing well enough on assets like the plethora of beaches, golf etc etc. Bangor has none of these.
So what to do: Well the express train to Belfast centre is a very good link, the schools are great, there are a lot of nice buildings, and the marina and coastal paths are superb. So it needs to go all in on public realm, expand the train station, encourage apartments for commuters looking urban amenities in a nice place, apartments for retiree / downsizers. Maybe get a grade A office block or hotel in the mix.
Where more or less did all this and is thriving? Holywood. The main street is buzzing. So there must be something locally wrong with leaders or business leaders in Bangor, because it has better assets with the marina etc
Classic case of: build an out-of-town shopping centre, with free parking, in close proximity to the town itself; coupled with “let’s begin charging for on-street parking” in the original town centre.
See also, Lisburn.
I would label the folk who run our councils as “morons”, but that would be too much of a compliment.
Bangor has insane potential – as a resident it is a shame that it isn’t being unlocked by competent leadership. It is so run down.
Surely they can reduce the rates or offer incentives to get the high/main street thriving. There would be no shortage of willing entrepreneurs if the overheads weren’t so ridiculous.
They really need to commence the marine works as the current state of the area turns a lovely marina into a hellhole.
Less flags would help in promoting the place to the other 50% of the population as well.
I know most towns in Northern Ireland aren’t great but the failure to capitalise on the proximity to Belfast/the airport/the beaches/train station/the schools is pretty disheartening.
DUP and its splinter groups want all the towns here to look like Bangor, Portadown and Larne. As Terence O’Neill said all those years ago: they don’t care what a dungheap Northern Ireland turns into as long as they are on top of it crowing.
Newry is becoming like this and has been since getting “city status”. I feel like this is what is happening when towns get their “city status”. Once a bussling town is now a ghost town where no one wants to be/work/go out in. It’s about time politicians (in the most polite way I can think of) pull their fingers out of their arses and the big wars of money out of their back pockets and give back to these towns and cities which are suffering at the hands of their greed
Utter dump. The Israel flags definitely help drive shoppers to the empty street.
Most places here are shit holes. And like most places here a good audit of the local council would likely reveal all
Bangor? I hardly know her
Bangor council are and always have been a disgrace
North Down council was on the verge of bankruptcy. When the new boundaries were drawn up, and the merger with Ards Borough it basically saved them.
10(?) Years later Ards is still propping Bangor up. It’s wild given the disparity in the resident populations.
People are saying it needs investment… where does it come from? The rates we pay are already the highest in the country, and private equity was already explored for the sea front development… there wasn’t exactly a queue of investors.
Who knows.
Last time I was there was 12 years ago, it was that grim, I decided not to go back. It’s no Newcastle, that’s for sure. Promenade and main Street always busy
Do you not think that all UK towns have the same afflictions? While some say rates and NI increases, this was going on before both and still would be were they not happening.
Simply put, town councils and developers are stuck in the 1990s’ mode of redevelopment. Shops are never coming back, so they need to ask, why should people visit your town?
By people I don’t mean tourists necessarily, just people who live outside the west circular road.
That’s a difficult question to answer, with Bangor, and getting worse.
Bangor has nugelato ice cream, a cinema, a park and Bloomfield’s that’s about it. It’s good to see club 24 gym and airtastic get renovations though.
So many towns have went this way.
The world has been like this since they invented online ordering and the decline in high street shops grew more since Amazon and other online retailers grew.
I haven’t beem to Bangor since 2010 and even back then the high street was going this way. It was only going to get worse with falling footfall.
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