BELFAST City Council is poised to approve a £95 million house building and business project in the west of the city, just six months after the application was submitted.
The Glenmona development is one of the largest ever residential planning applications lodged with the local authority.
Derry house building Braidwater is proposing 653 units on a 75-acre site between the Glen Road and Monagh Bypass.
It includes 549 social housing units and 104 units classed as affordable housing.
It will be broken down into 300 semi detached, 183 terrace and two detached homes. The remaining 168 units will comprise apartments.
The application also includes two replacement care homes, a retail centre, hotel, industrial units and office space.
The developer said the project will involve around 400 construction jobs.
Braidwater anticipates that when complete, the carious business and care facilities on the site will house up to 370 jobs.
Despite the scale of the proposal, the application process has been accelerated by a previous outline application granted in late 2013, which established the principle of a major housing scheme along with care homes, a hotel and business units.
Braidwater also spent more than one year on the pre-planning process before submitting its application in May.
A report recommending approval will be considered at Tuesday’s meeting of Belfast City Council’s planning committee.
The approval is subject to a number of conditions including a detailed travel plan, employability and kills plan, as well as financial contributions to establish a bus route to serve the site.
Negotiating those finer details could potentially delay the issuing of an official decision notice, which is required to start construction.
But Braidwater’s planning and technical director, Finbarr Grogan, has already said the company will move to the build phase as soon as possible.
“Our plan is to go straight to build if approval is granted and this quick turnaround will be of particular importance for our local construction sector, which has faced a very difficult few months,” he said in May.
The Eglinton-based construction firm has already announced that Apex Housing Association will be responsible for the management of the completed social rented homes.
It has also stated that affordable housing will be offered for sale to first time buyers or people who are currently not in home ownership.
Braidwater is currently active on eight development sites around the north, with close to 1,000 private and social homes under construction.
