IRELAND’S LARGEST university, the University of Ulster, has unveiled a dramatic blueprint for a £250 million new campus in Belfast.
The university – which presently has campuses at Magee (Derry), Coleraine, Jordanstown and York Street, Belfast – plans to build a major hub in downtown Belfast, to include a landmark 10-storey glass building.
Taking advantage of rock-bottom property prices, the university recently snapped up a swathe of land adjacent to its York Street campus, including the Interpoint building, once home to the Northern Ireland Forum.
It is envisaged the main mall at Jordanstown, 12 miles outside Belfast, will be demolished. Some 13,000 students will then be relocated to the city centre by 2018 to join the 2,000 art and architecture students already studying at York Street.
The proposal has been widely seen as a major boost for the north inner city, which suffers some of the worst social deprivation in Europe.
The UUP’s Basil McCrea, who chairs the Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee at Stormont, called the scheme “breathtaking” and said it was a “good thing for north Belfast and the whole city”.
He continued: “The university has been both clever and fortunate in that [it has] put together a parcel of land that lets them [carry out] a really audacious plan without having to bring in compulsory purchasing.”
He said the plans, by architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, could be approved in as little as six months, with work beginning at the end of the year.
The university’s vice-chancellor, Prof Richard Barnett, said that integrating into the wider city was an important element of the plan.
“Universities in the past tended to be inward-facing institutions behind iron railings and walls, which did not interact with the communities around them,” he said.
“We are breaking from that tradition with a bold design that sends out a very strong message locally and internationally that we want everyone to feel that this is their university, regardless of their background, and we want them to have access to the building and facilities inside.”
The Jordanstown campus was built on a greenfield site in the 1960s as part of the wave of ‘plate-glass’ colleges. It was originally the Ulster Polytechnic but became part of the new University of Ulster in 1984.
The university will keep a presence at Jordanstown after 2018, including student accommodation and sports facilities.