Titanic Quarter, Belfast
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Titanic Quarter in Belfast, is an area situated on reclaimed land in Belfast city harbour, formerly called Queen's Island.
This huge area, previously owned by Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast, and named after the company's most famous product RMS Titanic, has been earmarked for development as a blue-chip technology district, including apartments, a riverside entertainment district, and a major Titanic-themed attraction.
On July 2006 work began on the first stage of the development. Previously, Titanic Quarter was largely a brownfield site, notable only for the presence of the abandoned headquarters of Harland & Wolff (now relocated). Since 2005, it has also been the home of the Northern Ireland Science Park, a hothouse development hi-tech science park affiliated closely with Queen's University Belfast. The Odyssey Complex is adjacent to Titanic Quarter. On 31 October 2006, BBC News reported that Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education plans to build a new £44 campus in Titanic Quarter, moving from its Belfast city centre sites on Brunswick Street and College Square East in 2009 BBC News - Titanic Quarter move for college.
Titanic Quarter is also the name of a private development company that is developing the area.
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[edit] History
The area first came to public attention as 'Titanic Park' in 1995 when it was officially launched by U.S. President Bill Clinton at the Washington Peace Conference. Nothing much happened for about 7 years, but plans accelerated in September 2002 when the former head of public-private investment company Laganside Corporation, Mike Smith, was appointed as Chief Executive of the renamed "Titanic Quarter" . In October 2005, building work finally commenced on 'Abercorn Apartments', the first official development of Titanic Quarter.
[edit] Technology Quarter
It is hoped that Titanic Quarter will eventually develop into a hi-technology orientated village, a new-model futuristic sector, very much in the mold of Paris's La Défense. In the past, entrepreneurship in specialist technology sectors has been evident in Northern Ireland, in such areas as shipbuilding and aerospace. Harland and Wolff and Shorts Bombardier, the province's two key players in the above industries, have recently downsized substantially, at the loss of a great number of jobs and an even greater level of confidence for Belfast and Northern Ireland. Titanic Quarter is, however, seen as an attempt to encourage a reversal in fortune, by building research and development capital (through endeavours such as the Northern Ireland Science park) while at the same time attracting leading blue-chip industries to set up in Belfast.
[edit] The Future
As a functioning 'quarter' in Belfast, Titanic Quarter has yet to make any cultural imprint, and its legacy remains to be seen. Titanic Quarter's main challenges will be to avoid the soulless grand-architectural statement of countless similar 'new developments' such as La Défense, or Brasilia, and instead encourage a truly organic development that will fuse it with the history of the area and the city as a whole. The October 2006 announcement that the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education will relocate to the site, doubtless with all the recreational trappings of student life; bars, shops and such; as well as recent speculation that Titanic Quarter was being courted by the Northern Ireland Office as a potential site for Northern Ireland's proposed multi-sports stadium (now favoured for the former Maze site), is sign at least that Titanic Quarter will not be be 'all-work-and-no-play'. As mentioned above, Titanic Quarter Developments are currently at work on a Titanic-themed attraction that aims to bring not only pale-looking research and development scientists to the area, but tourists and families too. As Titanic Quarter Ltd. aims to attract residential and technological development in the area, meaning work and living space, its relationship to Belfast City Centre, situated just across the River Lagan, remains undefined. Due to the high predicted level of commercial wealth generating activity in the area, it is unlikely that Titanic Quarter will be comfortably defined as soley a technologically-charged 'suburb'. Its status will more likely be simliar to that of Long Island, New York, caught between residential suburb and 'Technoburb'. A Technoburb, in this definition, is a self sustaining community that doesn't rely on an urban center for its main jobsource.
