Emma Cooper

After several years of rising interest rates, construction costs and economic uncertainty, the market is becoming more selective. However, that should not be confused with a lack of demand. Businesses still want high quality space, investors remain interested in Belfast and developers are continuing to look for opportunities.

The real change is in what the market now expects.

The office is no longer simply about floor space. Employers want buildings that help attract and retain staff, with good transport connections, sustainability credentials, amenities and high-quality public realm.

Developments such as City Quays demonstrate what can be achieved when commercial property is considered as part of a wider place-making strategy. The combination of Grade A offices, public space, hospitality and emerging residential uses, such as Loft Lines, is helping to create a more vibrant waterfront environment.

The development of Weavers Cross and Grand Central Station, together with One Bankmore and the proposed Flax Yards provides another opportunity to reshape Belfast’s commercial landscape. The combination of transport infrastructure with office use, residential, leisure and public realm has the potential to change how people move through and use the city centre.

But development is becoming harder to deliver. Construction and financing costs remain challenging, while planning and infrastructure can add significant uncertainty to development programmes. In the current market, a viable scheme needs more than a good location; it needs certainty, connectivity and a clear long-term proposition.

This is where Belfast needs to be ambitious.

For developers and investors, the opportunity is substantial. Belfast has both the potential and the determination to connect established communities with new commercial, residential and leisure development, creating genuine mixed-use neighbourhoods rather than isolated schemes. The city’s ambition should extend beyond delivering more apartments or offices; it should be to create places where people can live, work and spend their leisure time.

As a real estate lawyer, I see increasingly how important early collaboration has become. Developers, investors, occupiers, professional advisers and the public sector all need to work together if ambitious projects are to move from the drawing board to completion.

Belfast has many of the ingredients needed for a successful commercial property market: a skilled workforce, strong professional and technology sectors, excellent universities and a cost base that remains competitive against many UK cities.

The opportunity now is to turn those advantages into development.

The question is not whether Belfast can attract investment. It is whether we can deliver the quality, infrastructure and certainty needed to convert that investment into buildings and places that will support the city’s next generation of businesses.

That is the opportunity in front of us – and it is one Belfast should be ambitious enough to grasp.

Emma Cooper is a partner at Carson McDowell