Planning officials back plans to demolish site of former Delaney’s restaurant

The site of one of Belfast’s most well-known restaurants looks set to be demolished and replaced with a five-storey apartment block.

For many years Delaney’s became a regular lunchtime stop-off for city workers and shoppers and the unusual corner building is currently home to Café Nero.

Marmont Properties is now proposing to raze the unit at 19-27 Lombard Street and replace it with a five-storey building with a street level café/restaurant and a dozen apartments in the four floors above.

Eight of the units will have just one bedroom, with four two-bedroom apartments and each unit will also have its own balcony.

Despite a council conservation officer expressing some reservations over the loss of a unique building boasting “a historically inspired shop front, internal cast iron columns and beams dating back to 1910”, planning officers concluded the existing building “does not make a positive contribution to the character and appearance of the city centre conservation area as a whole”, especially given the taller characteristics of the neighbouring buildings.

Planning officials also appeared to overrule the objections of NI Water on the ground of insufficient capacity at the local wastewater treatment plant and insufficient network capacity.

The report adds: “Given NI Water’s duty to connect to those developments and that it has not provided detailed evidence to support its objection to this particular application, it would be unreasonable for the council to refuse planning permission on these grounds.”