THE former court house on Bangor seafront is in line for a multi-million pound refurbishment as part of a popular Co Down arts festival.
The Open House Festival has this week submitted a £3.1m funding application to the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore and develop the listed building, which has been empty since it was decommissioned by the Courts Service in 2013.
The music and arts charity plans to restore the existing building to its former glory, providing permanent office space for the festival team and other local creative companies, with an ambitious new extension to the rear, housing a multi-purpose performance space.
Built 150 years ago as a branch of the Belfast Bank, the iconic building was converted into the town's magistrates court in the 1950s and was listed as Grade B2 in the 1970s.
Open House Festival runs a month-long annual festival in Bangor town centre every August, and generated an estimated £1.1 million of local spend in the town during summer 2016.
English social designer Wayne Hemingway and his firm Hemingway Design has teamed up with local developers the Karl Group and Farrans to submit a tender for the redevelopment and re-imagining of Queen’s Parade and the Marine Gardens, including the court house.
Hemingway has led seaside regeneration projects in England and was part of Derry's successful 2016 bid for UK city of culture.
"We think that the regeneration of the court house by Open House Festival is something really special and unique for Bangor and the community living here," Mr Hemingway said.
"It can add a beautiful bookend to the plans for the public spaces of a rejuvenated Bangor waterfront, and the thought of looking out from the court house across a generous people-centred promenade, gardens and events spaces to those lovely houses overlooking Pickie is a mouth-watering one."
Festival director Kieran Gilmore said this was a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to revitalise Bangor.
"It is hugely exciting to have someone of the calibre of Wayne Hemingway turn his attentions to Bangor. We are very keen to hear his ideas for the town, and to see how the Court House could dovetail with that vision.
"With the Court House and the Queen’s Parade development both potentially happening in the near future, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to turn Bangor’s fortunes around."
