A Belfast commercial property agent has proposed that the Maze Prison, which finally closes later this year when the last few inmates are released, should be sold for development as a high-tech industrial park.
The strategic position of the Maze, close to the M1-A1 junction and with easy access to Belfast International Airport as well as the Dublin-Belfast train line, suggests that the site could be worth £130 million if sold on the open market. The valuation is based on a probable value of £500,000 per acre for the 260-acre site.
A number of possible uses for the prison site have been discussed including the creation of a museum, a motor sports track and a Silicon Valley-like development.
Mr Alistair Dunn, managing director of Lisney, yesterday said the site could incorporate a fully fledged high-tech business park creating hundreds of jobs, a museum and leisure facilities.
"In much the same way as Berlin now regrets having razed so much of the old Wall, Northern Ireland could be in danger of dismissing the museum potential of the Maze. Berlin nonetheless retained the world-famous Checkpoint Charlie which is the most visible part left of the wall. Similarly a plan could be envisaged which encompasses a commercial, job-creating business park as well as partial preservation."
Mr Dunn said that depending on what use the site was finally put to, it could be worth anywhere up to £500,000 per acre, making the old prison site one of the best development locations in the North.
The site has been a prison since 1971 when up to 1,700 men were held in Nissen huts on the site of a second World War RAF airfield. The prisoners later burned down the camp in 1974.
In the mid-1970s the eight H-blocks were constructed with 100 cells in the legs of the "H" with a control room, warder's office, classrooms and medical treatment room in the crossbar of the "H".
The complex also has industrial workshops, indoor sports hall, all-weather sports pitches and a hospital.
Republicans have proposed that some form of memorial be maintained to the prison, particularly in respect of Bobby Sands, a convicted bomber, who was the first of 10 republicans to die on hunger-strike in the Maze in 1981. However, loyalists who were imprisoned in equal number to republicans appear eager that the prison be demolished.
Meanwhile, two other institutions closely associated with the "Troubles", the Crumlin Road Prison and the courthouse in north Belfast, are also empty and awaiting development.
Dunloe Ewart bought the Crumlin Road Prison shortly after it closed two years ago. The prison sits on a large site opposite the courthouse which was built by Belfast's leading Victorian architect, Sir Charles Lanyon, and is listed for preservation. No such order exists on the Crumlin Road Prison although there is a problem over the unmarked graves of some 16 men, 13 of whom were hanged there.
In 1998 the Prison Service, which has received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to exhume the remains, confirmed 13 possible unmarked graves have been pinpointed in the north Belfast prison.
The Crumlin Road is one of the most dilapidated parts of the city and has existed largely as a buffer zone between the Protestant Shankill area and Catholic Ardoyne. Dunloe Ewart hopes that the establishment of local government in Northern Ireland could mean the redevelopment of abandoned sites, including the prison, for administrative use, bringing much-needed economic activity back into the area.