An advocacy group raising awareness of good urban development in the Cathedral Quarter area of Belfast says that the recent fire highlights the importance of preventing built heritage.
Save Cathedral Quarter (Save CQ) brings together a wide range of backgrounds and expertise on issues of urban development, from planning and architecture to housing, transport, the arts and culture, and social justice.
Rebekha McCabe told Belfast Live, Live that more needs to be done to protect historic buildings such as the Cathedral Buildings and the independent businesses that inhabit them.
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Rebekha said: " We are a campaign group that was set up in response to the regeneration proposals that were published in 2017 to demolish a good chunk of the existing fabric of the Cathedral Quarter and replace it with new buildings that were retail-led or offices and very much change not only the buildings but the use in the area.
"We are just a group of volunteers who organsied ourselves in opposition to that and to try to raise public awareness about what was being proposed, what it would mean for that part of the city, what some of the alternatives should be and the principles of good development that the council should consider when looking at that as a planning proposal."
News of the Cathedral Buildings fire on October 3 left the group "heartbroken" for the people affected.
"There have been a lot of fires around that area affecting older buildings - the North Street Arcade in 2004, the Exchange Place fire in 2017 and now the Cathedral Buildings.
"Since the Arcade fire, nothing has been done to it and it was never restored. We are seeing the vulnerability of these older buildings to fire and we are concerned with so much built heritage in the area already under threat from redevelopment and demolition.
"To see a building that was meant to be protected, it is just awful - especially considering how many people were using that building and how much work has been lost. It is just so sad," she explained.
Rebekah continued: "The Cathedral Quarter is a part of landscape heritage and is the oldest area of Belfast. It used to be the heart of the city and it does tell the collective story of Belfast in lots of different ways.
"As a campaign group, we never just talk about old buildings for their own sake but we talk about what they are able to offer the city and how they differ from new buildings. The scale of them allows for a wide variety of uses and allows them to adapt over time so they are actually the most sustainable kind of architecture you can get.
"They are so good for supporting small businesses and independent traders - look at the variety of things that were in Cathedral Buildings that we didn't even know about until the fire. It is this kind of variety of use that makes a city feel alive."
Rebekah and the Save CQ team hope that going forward, Belfast City Council can do more to protect the city's built heritage and prevent disasters like this from happening in the future.
"Belfast became a hollowed out retail city except for these small remaining pockets where you have creative industries, artists, independent businesses who are able to set up because the architecture allows them to. You lose that, you lose the soul of the city," she added.
"The city council is the custodian of these buildings even though they are in private ownership because they are heritage buildings and the city council has the responsibility to protect them and we believe they have failed.
"All around us, we are seeing this profit-driven loss of our collective heritage - this belongs to all of us and the council needs to invoke their powers to ensure the Cathedral Buildings are restored and that the tenants that want to return to them are able to do so."
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