Park Avenue Hotel to be demolished for social housing

The Park Avenue Hotel in east Belfast is to be demolished and replaced with social housing.

In August 2019 Bill Wolsey’s Beannchor Group revealed it had taken over the running of the troubled east Belfast venue, and it was hoped that would secure the future of the 56-bedroom venue and the jobs of around 60 staff.

However, a year later the group confirmed that operating the Holywood Road hotel was no longer viable and that it would not be reopening.

Now plans submitted by Holywood Holdings, which counts Bill Wolsey among its directors, have been approved by Belfast Council’s Planning Committee.

The site will become home to a ‘social-led’ development comprising 75 apartments, 11 townhouses and 4 apartments, along Sefton Drive.

Proposals involve hard and soft landscaping including communal gardens, provision of car parking spaces, a `tenant and staff hub’, cycle parking, a substation, retaining walls, and associated works including road improvement works at the junction of Park Avenue and Sefton Drive. It will reach a maximum height of four storeys.

Beannchor’s other interests include the five-star Merchant Hotel, Bullitt Hotel and Little Wing pizzerias.

The hotel, once popular as a venue for political party conferences, was declared insolvent in the summer of 2019, just over a year after it was unveiled as the venue for celebrity chef Marco Pierre White’s first Northern Ireland restaurant.

At the time of acquiring the premises a statement from the Beannchor Group said: “Over the coming weeks we will seek to review all options and future plans for the business and our immediate objective will be to preserve employment and continue to serve Park Avenue customers.”