Fresh hotel bid for listed former war memorial building
The Waring Street building, which was sold by Liverpool developer Lawrence Kenwright last year, is now the focus of a new regeneration scheme led by Seamus and Orla Murray’s SOM Properties,
Mr Murray is best known for his Toomebridge-based joinery business Edgewater Contracts, which specialises in hotel fit-outs.
SOM Properties have appointed conservation specialists Consarc to design its new Waring Street hotel. The Belfast firm previously worked on The Merchant Hotel and Titanic Hotel projects.
The design firm has proposed largely retaining the main war memorial building, while constructing a new six storey extension to the rear.
Built between 1959 and 1961, the war memorial building was constructed in an area destroyed during The Blitz. English architect Michael Bawley’s modernist concept was selected as the winning entry from a design competition.
Consarc’s extensive heritage report on the hotel scheme also raises the potential of reopening Sugar House Entry, which runs alongside the former war memorial building toward High Street.
The entry, which has been closed since the 1970s for security reasons, was once home to a number of inns, including ‘Dr Franklins’, named for Benjamin Franklin and kept by Peg Barclay.
It is the second major new hotel planned for Waring Street. Planning approval was granted in June for a 164-bedroom Moxy Hotel in the former Nambarrie Tea building down the street. The £20 million development is being led by Essex-based investment and development firm Propiteer, co-founded by Co Antrim native Dave Marshall.
The news comes as a number of prospective bidders compete for the former Scottish Mutual Building in Belfast, the site of another of Mr Kenwright’s failed Belfast projects, the George Best Hotel.
Colliers have marketed the listed building as a “prime city centre hotel development opportunity:.
