A new £70 million university and higher education campus that will have a major socio-economic impact on the nationalist Falls and loyalist Shankill areas of Belfast has been given the final go-ahead by the North's Minister of Higher and Further Education, Dr Sean Farren.
There was a broad cross-community welcome for the announcement that the Springvale Educational Village is to be established on the old Mackie's engineering site on the Springfield Road. Located on the so-called peace line, it straddles the working-class nationalist and loyalist areas of west and north Belfast.
As Dr Farren explained yesterday, the three-year development project is unique in that it is centred in and is geared towards regenerating a deprived environment that has sustained the worst effects of the violence.
The former Northern secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, last year gave her agreement in principle for the project, pledging £40 million towards the capital costs contingent on the additional £30 million being raised by the University of Ulster and the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education, which jointly have responsibility for the campus.
This money has been raised through the University of Ulster and BIFHE, the International Fund for Ireland, the British Lottery and the private sector.
The village, which will follow a holistic pattern of education, will be built in three stages. Early next year an outreach centre will be established to open opportunities for people from the local disadvantaged area to attain the educational requirements to allow them avail of the opportunities at the campus for further and higher education.
Later next year an applied research centre will be created. It is designed to stimulate inward investment to west and north Belfast and the development of new local companies involved in such areas as bio-engineering, bio-medicine and multi-media.
In 2003 the main campus should be completed. "Not only will the village provide 3,000 full-time equivalent places, equating to 4,500 full and part-time students, but it should also have a positive and direct impact on the social, cultural and economic regeneration of the area and indeed Northern Ireland as a whole," Dr Farren said.
Mr Jackie Redpath, chief executive of the Greater Shankill Partnership, said the village had the potential to dramatically revitalise the Shankill.
Mr Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president and West Belfast MP, also said the project had the "potential to create something unique on this island in terms of a new approach to further and higher education".
