Tribeca Belfast project ‘exempt from paying rates on 20 assets’

No rates are being paid on 20 assets within the Tribeca Belfast urban regeneration scheme - eight years after Castlebrooke Investments initially acquired a raft of buildings on a 12-acre site in the city centre, close to St Anne’s Cathedral.

The Irish News has learnt that Land & Property Service has reviewed the rateable distinguishments on 45 properties in the scheme, and while 25 are paying annual rates, the others have met the threshold for exemption.

Assets and properties don’t have to pay rates if they are granted charitable exemption, while there are other exemptions around sport & recreation use, industrial derating, non-domestic vacant relief and freight transport relief.

Its owners claim the £500 million Tribeca scheme will eventually transform the city.

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But parts within its boundary have become derelict and often unsafe, with increased levels of anti-social behaviour compared to other parts of the city centre.

Castlebrooke acquired the various properties from Cerberus which make up Tribeca in 2016, and they insist they have continuously invested in the city since that permission and have paid around £1 million in rates.

However, the Irish News has seen a detailed audit document from a world-leading property agency, which surveyed more than two dozen assets in the area in 2023, most of them within the Tribeca portfolio.

The agency looked at a range of assets, from car parks to the likes of Alpha House in Rosemary Street/North Street, the CCC social club, North Street Arcade, and the Masonic Lodge in Rosemary Street, as well as most of the properties in North Street currently lying derelict.

The total rates due on those assets was estimated to be in the region of £2 million in just a single year.

SDLP Assembly opposition leader Matthew O’Toole, in an Assembly written question, asked the Minister of Finance whether Land & Property Services (LPS) has carried out the required regular inspections of each asset in the Tribeca site boundary to ensure the relief being granted is appropriate, qualifying and continuing since its initial grant.

He also asked whether all assets qualifying for rates relief in the Tribeca site boundary are being occupied by the appropriate qualifying entities (for example, should a small charity employing just a few staff, occupying a four-storey building, make those premises exempt from rates).

In a response seen by the Irish News, the minister said that LPS “is currently reviewing procedures to ensure occupier changes on property benefitting from such reliefs are identified”.

Mr O’Toole told the Irish News: “It’s bewildering and byzantine the number of exemptions and reliefs around this scheme, and also at the lack of clarity from the owners on the scheme’s future.

“All the while, there are many hospitality businesses, retailers, those on the cultural scene, and historical groups all desperate to get working in that area and willing to make a rates contribution.”

Meanwhile the Irish News has seen evidence of where a prominent businessman and media commentator, after overstaying by several minutes in a car park in North Street operated by Euro Car Parks, within the Tribeca scheme, was sent an enforcement notice and fine.

He wrote a letter to Euro Car Parks - which he copied to the LPS - asking if the car park actually paid rates.

He was sent a swift response from Euro Car Parks informing him that “your appeal has been successful”.

But the businessman told us: “The thing is, I didn’t even appeal it. I was simply asking if they paid rates, which obviously they weren’t.”

He added: “The LPS then wrote to inform me the North Street car park was added to the valuation list on April 22 2024, and would have their rates backdated only to April 2023, although I understand that car park has been operating there for many years.”

The latest question mark over the future of the scheme comes as accounts filed by Castlebrooke subsidiary Project Goat - which owns the Tribeca Belfast assets - reveal that the total debt it accrued last year reached nearly £110 million.

Separate documents published in Luxembourg indicate a £40m loan granted to the developer in 2016 was due to mature at the end of December 2023.

At June 2023, Project Goat had liabilities of £77.4 million. That’s up from £56.3m at the same time in 2022 - and from just £817,000 when it first acquired the assets in 2016.

Those latest accounts, filed in March, show that Project Goat’s assets shrunk over the year to £36.9 million, and its cash in the bank diminished from £495,000 in 2022 to just £55,000 last year.

Castlebrooke’s representatives in Belfast, when approached by the Irish News, declined to comment.