Yahoo News City hall makes appeal to Stormont to "save" Trademarket with further time to find new home
Belfast Council has made an appeal to Stormont to give city centre organisation Trademarket a lifeline while they look for a new site to trade on.
Elected members at a City Hall committee have supported a call to the Department for Infrastructure to allow another short “meanwhile” lease for Trademarket beside its current temporary Dublin Road site, to give the traders association time to look for a new place in the city to set up shop.
Last week food and retail market launched a campaign to save the business as its lease on the site of the old Movie House Cinema comes to an end on July 31. Earlier this month Belfast City Council gave the green light for two major developments on the site: digital technology company Kainos’ new Bankmore Exchange HQ and a new Queen’s University student accommodation block.
The construction of the new Kainos headquarters is set to begin in September and the project is scheduled for completion within 24 months, with Kainos aiming to take occupancy in early 2027. Queen’s hope to have their building ready for the 2026/27 term.
Trademarket are appealling for the public to support them in a plan to move their businesses next door to Bankmore Square. They said: "It is with a very heavy heart that we must announce the closure of Trademarket from the end of Summer 2024.
“Trademarket has always been a hub for independent businesses and has over 20 spaces for grassroots enterprise and has employed 100+ people. We always knew that our time at 14 Dublin Road, Belfast, was limited, but we expected to make this announcement with a plan for the future."
The statement said that the permanent closure of Trademarket would be "unnecessary" as they believed it could be housed at the Bankmore Square site, a space they describe as a "natural fit" for the business.
This appeal faces a major hurdle as the Stormont department already has plans to develop Bankmore Square for the planned north/south Glider route.
It emerged at the Belfast City Council Planning Committee meeting earlier this month that Kainos had offered to spend considerable sums of money to regenerate public realm space around Bankmore Square when it builds its HQ, only to be told not to by the Department for Infrastructure.
The Square, which has a small park, has been an unsightly scene for many years, with poor pavements and an unkempt green space, long before the demolition of the Movie House Cinema.
However, despite the department’s plans, at the council’s recent meeting of its Strategic Policy and Resources committee, elected members agreed that if the market shuffled sideways from the MovieHouse site to Bankmore Square for a short period before work began on the Glider Route, it could give them enough time to find a permanent home.
Green Councillor Brian Smyth, who proposed the plan, told the committee: “We have seen how this area has grown since coronavirus how popular it is. It means a lot to a lot of people here, and I would like us to write to DfI, to the Minister, to say we are supportive of finding a space at Bankmore.”
Alliance Councillor Micky Murray, said: “I have worked quite a long time to get a long term home for them, but now they need a temporary one, and that is where Bankmore Square comes in.
“They have made pretty detailed plans on how to move the business to Bankmore Square, in a way that protects the local businesses and increases the biodiversity of the land there by over 300 percent. They have letters of support from all political parties and local businesses as well.
“At the moment, as the Linen Quarter Bid has said in their response, they hold the lease until March 2025, and have stated in their response they would be willing to consider surrendering the lease if approached by DfI with a project.
"DfI have plans for Bankmore Square for the Glider route, so we know it is going to be a temporary solution, but it will be enough time to get Trademarket a long-term home, and to navigate getting new licences etcetera.”
He said: “Anyone that works for a South Belfast MLA or MP will know that they have had thousands of emails in, and that (the response) has crashed email systems. And there are thousands more to come, from people who just want to see this collection of small businesses be saved.”
He proposed the council write to the Minister for infrastructure to communicate the City Hall’s support for Trademarket moving to Bankmore Square as “an independent catalyst for local business activity with a unique offering for tourists.” The letter will on the department to allow the traders a lease at Bankmore Square from July 2024 until the Linen Quarter Bid lease runs out in March.
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