BELFAST BRIEFING/FRANCESS MCDONNELL:NO 27 Talbot Street in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter is proof that, if you have a business dream and you are determined to succeed, there is no better place to be than Northern Ireland at the moment.
Ten years ago, the city's Talbot Street was the last place on earth you would have considered for a night out. If you had ventured into this area on the eve of the Good Friday Agreement, you would have found a dark and depressing corner of the city where you were more likely to run into trouble than anything else.
A decade later, Talbot Street is testimony to the transformation that has been taking place across Belfast and the North in general. On any average Saturday night, the area is buzzing, thanks in no small part thanks to the opening of No 27 Talbot Street - one of the city's newest and most fashionable restaurants
It makes a chic, modern statement about the kind of city Belfast has become. It also reflects a growing confidence in Northern Ireland as a place to invest money.
The restaurant is one of a number of new businesses in the fashionable Cathedral Quarter, which is now the established arts and cultural quarter of the city. It is located in a £12 million (€15 million) redevelopment promoting the restoration of a former 19th century textiles warehouse in the quarter.
The group behind the mixed-used scheme is Northern Ireland-based Barnabas Ventures. It offers a somewhat different perspective to doing business in the North and is far from the usual run-of the mill property development company.
The company says its corporate vision is shaped by a verse from the Bible: "Looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God."
Regardless of how you may feel about religious sentiment, there is no denying that Barnabas Ventures' faith in the Talbot Street project has been well placed.
Where there was a run-down abandoned warehouse, a transformed listed building now enjoys a whole new lease of life.
Not many companies in Northern Ireland may share the same corporate vision as Barnabas Ventures, but what they do share is a faith in the future of the North as a business opportunity.
There is a new corporate Northern Ireland emerging from the chrysalis of the Troubles. What it offers now is a safe place for investors to place their money in.
Northern Ireland is not, and never will be, a place untouched by its past but it is moving on and to do that it needs to create a new economic future.
The decision by four New York city pension funds to invest around $150 million in the Emerald Infrastructure Development Fund is a fundamental step on the road to creating that new future.
The fact that New York city comptroller William Thompson says he is "optimistic about the opportunities for potential strong returns" from Northern Ireland is a more than simply an endorsement; it is a signal that people now view the North differently.
The pension funds boost - coming just a month before the US/NI investment conference in Belfast - is perfect timing.
What is also going to help persuade potential investors that the time is now right to consider the North as a location is the new cross-Border financial services deal. This new initiative will let companies create subsidiaries in the North while locating their headquarters in the South.
It gives businesses the opportunity to benefit from a skills base north of the Border and a tax regime in the Republic - it is a marriage made in heaven. The cross-Border deal has the potential to create thousands of well-paid jobs in Northern Ireland, something currently in short supply.
A new report by the European Commission's Northern Ireland Task Force has suggested that the Northern Ireland's economy is now on the mend. But the task force says the North still bears the "scars" of the Troubles, including under-investment in infrastructure, an over-reliance on the public sector and high unemployment.
The number of people out of work in the North has been rising steadily in the last number of months. The credit crunch has had a severe impact on consumer spending and people are generally tightening their belts. The economic reality is that the climate is slightly chillier than it was this time last year when Northern Ireland was basking in the heat of an inflated housing market.
The construction sector in the North is shedding jobs in a quiet but deadly fashion and traditional industries such as textiles are continuing to decline.
Last week Ulster Weavers Apparel was the latest casualty: it plans to move its manufacturing base from Co Down to China, with the loss of 45 jobs. Nambarrie, the North's oldest tea company - founded in 1860 - also plans to close its Belfast plant later this year with the loss of 43 jobs.
House prices in the North have not only slowed, they have stalled, and the anxiety that this has triggered in an already nervous economy has put the brakes on economic growth in some quarters.
There is a leap of faith needed by everyone in Northern Ireland to get the economy from where it is now to where it needs to be. The example of Barnabas Ventures and its decision to put its trust in Talbot Street shows that blind faith can on occasion pay off.
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