Developers behind Belfast scheme sell similar project in Manchester

The company behind a stalled redevelopment of a large part of Belfast city centre has sold a similar project in Manchester.

Last week Castlebrooke said it was bringing forward new plans for its Belfast site between Royal Avenue and St Anne's Cathedral.

The company had owned the CIS Tower in central Manchester for almost a decade, gaining planning permission to refurbish the 28-storey building.

Last month it sold the building to the Manchester-based MCR Property Group.

Aneel Mussarat, the founder of MCR, said the CIS Tower was "an asset with significant untapped potential that has been overlooked for many years".

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to breathe fresh life into a much loved but neglected property, creating a modern and sustainable future for the CIS Tower," he said.

Castlebrooke bought the CIS Tower in 2017 and have been attempting to sell it as an "oven-ready" redevelopment opportunity for several years.

This is the second time Castlebrooke have sold on a redevelopment scheme in central Manchester.

In 2017 it sold the Landmark office site to Barings Real Estate.

Last week it filed a pre-application planning notice proposing 1,000 new homes and two hotels as part of its Belfast scheme.

It also dropped the Tribeca name which it had used to brand earlier versions of its plans.

Proposals to redevelop the area of Belfast which lies between the cathedral and Royal Avenue have made little progress in the last 20 years.

A retail-led scheme called Royal Exchange scheme was first proposed by a different developer in 2006.

It was granted planning permission, but stalled because of the property crash.

In 2016, the scheme was sold to Castlebrooke by the Cerberus investment fund which had control of the loans underlying the properties.

Castlebrooke got planning permission for an office-led scheme in 2020 but the rise of working from home made that plan increasingly unviable.

Last year the company sold some of its properties to Belfast City Council.

The council paid around £3m for the historic Assembly Rooms and some adjacent properties.

Castlebrooke said its new plan would create a new street and a number of alleyways and public spaces to link the neighbourhood into the wider city centre street network.

It also envisages a "revitalised" Writers' Square, a public space directly opposite the cathedral.

The use of Writers' Square has been a point of contention between Castlebrooke and Stormont's Department for Communities which owns it.