There has been a call to invest in a "crumbling street" in Belfast City Centre where most of the businesses have closed and there are no street lights.
Businesses on North Street say that over the past few years the area has been "forgotten about" leading it to be full of empty and boarded up properties and a hotspot for anti-social behaviour.
They have told Belfast Live that the area has been in decline for a decade and they believe that more needs to be done to improve the street which is just a few yards away from the Cathedral Quarter and Royal Avenue.
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It is understood that a number of the businesses that were once based on North Street left around three years ago due to plans for the Tribeca development, with them fearing they did not have much time before their buildings would be demolished to build it. However no work has taken place on the project.
A manager of one of the businesses, said: "Over the past few years North Street has been completely forgotten about when it should be one of the gateways into the City Centre.
"Most of the businesses have left, believing that their buildings were going to be demolished three years ago, but since then nothing has been done at all and the street has been left to crumble.
"There are plans for a new tourism hub and attraction a few yards down the road, yet this area has been allowed to become rundown.
"The area has become a hotspot for drugs and antisocial behaviour, with Writer's Square constantly being littered with drug paraphernalia and one day we witnessed 40 people go down a nearby entry in order to do drugs. In the past few weeks there have been a number of overdoses, including someone who passed out in the middle of the street, and there has even been someone who died.
"There are no lights at all along the length of the street, which adds to the problem and I cannot imagine that anyone would feel safe allowing their daughter or son to walk along it after dark.
"The area is crying out for investment and it should not have been allowed to deteriorate to the level that it has and more needs to be done to ensure that developers are not holding up city centre regeneration."
A shop worker on North Street told Belfast Live that the area has been in decline for years and that most of the businesses left three years ago.
They said: "There used to be a lot more businesses down here but most of them left three years ago fearing that they would not have much time to do so after plans were approved to demolish their buildings.
"Since then nothing has happened and the street is full of former shops with their shutters down."
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