Greater Belfast’s first entertainment village services 500,000 + catchment area

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(Free-Press-Release.com) April 7, 2010 -- Destination Dundonald: with its ‘Ice Bowl’, ten pin bowling facilities and Pirates’ Adventure Golf Centre, the wider area is already well established as a leisure and entertainment attraction in its own right.

Now Eastpoint, Greater Belfast’s only entertainment village, is set to consolidate Dundonald’s growing reputation as a regional hub for family friendly entertainment.

The £18m entertainment village has attracted an eight screen Omniplex cinema as anchor tenant, and also offers space for restaurants and retail units, most of which have already been leased to local brands including Mookie World, Wolfes, Blue Chicago Grill and Asian restaurant, Gaze.

The 85,000 sq ft development at Eastpoint provides free parking spaces for approximately 670 cars, and its location just off the Old Dundonald Road Roundabout means that it benefits from excellent transport links into the city centre.

Eastpoint complements ongoing, multi agency initiatives to regenerate the wider area. The Hanwood Trust Company Ltd has recently completed the second phase of a regeneration project to construct business units for micro businesses and social enterprises just down the road from the village. Phase one, completed in 2005, provided a community resource centre and the recently completed phase three has provided more facilities, including a synthetic sports pitch and community gymnasium.

Castlereagh Borough Council estimate that Dundonald Ice Bowl currently receives 500,000 visitors every year, making the venue one of Northern Ireland’s best loved visitor attractions. When compared to our major tourist attractions, only the iconic Giant’s Causeway attracts more visitors every year. ¹

Within Eastpoint, The Omniplex has been open for over a year, and has attracted rave reviews from movie goers who can watch the latest blockbusters in ‘all digital’ formats, avail of free car parking, and then enjoy a choice of eating experiences in units in the rest of the complex.

The only other cinema-anchored entertainment village of a similar kind in Northern Ireland is in Lisburn, and joint letting agent Mark Carron from Osborne King feels that the Turkington Holdings development at Dundonald is well placed to service the demand for leisure and entertainment services in the Greater Belfast area:

“Given that Eastpoint is 5 miles from the city centre and 3 miles from George Best Belfast City Airport, access to the location is great.

There are 580,000 people in the wider Greater Belfast Metropolitan Area, and a core target market of 66,500 in Castlereagh Borough Council.

We believe that there is an untapped demand in Belfast for Eastpoint, complementary to Dundonald’s existing entertainment and leisure offering. We are looking at other uses for the scheme, such as pizza, steakhouse, bingo and other related leisure and retail businesses, all of which will sit well within Eastpoint. A further unit has recently been agreed to an Indian Resta