COLERAINE
DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT and STRATEGY

Coleraine is the dominant town in the Northern Plan area. The Regional Development Strategy published in September 2001 identified the town as one of the sixteen major hubs in the Region. By 2001 the town had a population of 23,700, the fifth largest town in the Region outside the Belfast Metropolitan Area and Londonderry. It is located strategically alongside the Northern Corridor and at the northern end of the link corridor towards Cookstown, Armagh and Newry.

The town is 90 kilometres north west of Belfast and 50 kilometres east of Londonderry, both of which are linked by the trunk roads and the railway of the Northern Corridor. This corridor also links the town with Belfast and Londonderry ports. Belfast City Airport, City of Derry Airport 35 kilometres to the west, and the main regional airport, Belfast International Airport, 70 kilometres to the south are all relatively accessible along the Northern Corridor.

Coleraine has a long history of settlement. The Mountsandel Mesolithic site has yielded among the earliest evidence of man in Ireland. The town has associations with Saint Patrick from the 5th Century, followed by a monastic site close to what was the lowest fording point on the Bann at Coleraine Bridge. The town was one of the two urban communities developed by the London Companies in County Londonderry in the Plantation at the beginning of the 17th Century. The town centre’s slightly skewed rectilinear street pattern is a continued legacy of that early exercise in town planning, along with traces of the lines of the earthen ramparts that provided the Plantation town with its defences. With some industrialisation, the expansion of the river port, and the coming of the railway, the town expanded significantly throughout the 19th Century and into the early part of the 20th Century.

Coleraine steadily expanded throughout the Post War period, with the population doubling, due to major industrial development on extensive suburban sites, the development of the University, the expansion of commerce and the development of extensive sport and recreational facilities. There has been a marked expansion of the urbanised area from the mid 20th Century compact town of less than 2 square kilometres, to the present much more dispersed town of approximately 11 square kilometres. Since 1980 growth has continued but at a slightly more modest pace. In the twenty years up to 2001 the town’s population increased by 22% to 23,700, but there was a reduction from 12% in the 1980s to 8% in the 1990s.

Coleraine has major industrial, commercial, educational, administrative, health and recreational facilities. The town retains an important industrial base with a number of major employers across a range of sectors. For many decades Coleraine has been the dominant retail centre in the north east of the Region. This has been strengthened in recent years by the completion of the Diamond Centre, the town’s first major indoor shopping mall, complemented by the progressive development of bulky goods stores at the Riverside Centre. The town has an expanding campus of the University of Ulster, a large Further Education College, and a wide range of high quality secondary and grammar schools. The Causeway Hospital, opened in 2001, provides acute health services. Apart from a wide range of recreational and sporting facilities within the town, including a large leisure centre, which has recently been modernised, Coleraine is located in close proximity to the North Coast with its attractions of national importance, tourist accommodation, and leisure facilities.

In the 16 years from mid 1988 to mid 2004, a total of 2,982 new dwellings were completed in the town. The North East Area Plan had postulated that 2,900 dwellings would be built in the period from 1988 to 2002, whereas only 2,651 were completed. There has been major residential expansion in the Knocklynn and Somerset/Greenmount areas in the south east and south west suburbs of the town, along with significant green field development north of the town between Cromore Road and Portrush Road, east of the ring road in Ballyarton, and north of Castlerock Road. There were also a significant number of dwellings completed on inner urban, brown-field sites (450, that is 15% of all completions).

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Consistent with the Coleraine’s role as a major hub in the Regional Development Strategy, the Plan will provide for the continued expansion of the town’s industrial, commercial, educational, residential and recreational functions. The town has the critical mass of population, and the range of facilities and services to facilitate sustainable development minimising the need to travel out of the town. It is strategically located on the regional transportation corridors and has a vibrant community base, with generally good relations between the main communities.  Accordingly, the town has a strong base for further expansion.

For the past generation, the town’s physical growth has largely been determined by the constraints of the ridge of high ground to the west of the town and the ring road to the east of the town. As a result the town has tended to grow outwards in three directions, towards the north in the Ballysally area, towards the south east with the development of a major neighbourhood of about 5,000 people in mountsandel/Knocklynn, and towards the south west in the Greenmount/Somerset area.

Consistent with the Regional Strategy’s envisaged role for Coleraine, the Plan will seek to direct and promote considerable housing within Coleraine. The emphasis of the Plan is to achieve an attractive, compact and efficient living environment. The rapid physical growth in the past has been of a relatively loose urban form, including considerable undeveloped and underused areas as developers mostly opted for the easiest green field, peripheral development options. The last Plan provided extensive areas of zoned housing land along with areas of undeveloped ‘white land’ that have only partially been developed. In fact housing developed at a slightly slower pace and generally at much greater densities than the North East Area Plan had envisaged. Furthermore, a significant proportion of new housing was built within the existing urban area, whereas the North East Area Plan had made no allowance for this happening. The net result is that a considerable part of the zoned housing land was never developed. With the emphasis of the Regional Strategy on achieving a more compact and a more sustainable urban form, and the very considerable amount and range of urban capacity sites identified within the urban footprint, it is considered there no longer is a need for much of the undeveloped ‘white land’ and zoned housing land inherited from the last plan.  Accordingly many of these potential sites have been deleted, the town’s development limit has been more tightly defined and the Green Belt has correspondingly been modestly expanded.

The Department considers that there is more than sufficient undeveloped industrial land remaining from the last Plan, coupled with the unforeseen partial development of a number of suburban business parks. Consistent with the Regional Development Strategy’s advice that there should be a generous supply of industrial land, the Plan retains all the existing industrial zonings and added a number of mixed use business parks. These can be expected to more than sufficient to provide for any possible demand for industrial/ business uses.

The Plan provides for the further expansion of Coleraine town centre as the major retail and commercial centre within the Plan area, with its relatively high levels of accessibility for all sections of the community. A major retail survey in the summer of 2003 confirmed that Coleraine town centre is the primary retail centre for the greater part of the Northern Plan area, competing with Ballymena to the south and Londonderry to the west. The Plan has defined a town centre area, within which appropriate retail and commercial development will be encouraged and provided for. This includes a number of major development opportunities particularly on vacant and underused sites. In addition there are numerous gap sites and individual buildings requiring redevelopment or refurbishment, which will be promoted through the Plan, so that the physical environment is enhanced and the town centre economy becomes more dynamic. The Plan seeks to facilitate the expansion of a buoyant retail centre increasingly complemented by a range of office, other commercial, leisure and residential uses. Encouraging progress has been made in recent years, and the Plan will provide a land use framework to build on this.

Coleraine is relatively well provided with leisure facilities and recreational land.  The Plan identifies open space, parks and playing fields which are protected from inappropriate development. The River Bann corridor is a major asset to the town and this must be protected, managed and enhanced when and where possible.  Considerable progress has been made in opening up the river margins as a major recreational resource, notably Christie Park and its southern extension to Castleroe, and Mountsandel Wood. The Plan promotes the further extension of public access along both banks of the Bann, and facilitates the appropriate development of supporting infrastructure servicing the recreational use of the river.

The University of Ulster has a major campus on the northern side of the town Development commenced in the late 1960s, and has flourished in recent years with the expansion of teaching buildings and student accommodation. The Plan provides for the continued development of a major science park facility on the northern part of the campus, within the University’s land holding.