Landmark Belfast bar gets half a million £ restoration

A best-known bar in belfast  has been transformed as part of a £500,000 redevelopment, creating up to 40 jobs.

The Apartment Bar and Restaurant at Donegall Square West, has been closed since the last weekend in July with major work which has transformed the site into new Irish American style bar and restaurant ‘Hell Cat Maggies’.

The bar, which will also serve food, will be solely housed on the first floor of the city centre building , with the ground floor to be filled by healthy fast-food chain Freshly Chopped which has been long awaited edtion to Belfast’s City centre.

The new Hell Cat Maggies bar is the latest development in the city from owners, the Downey Group, whose expanding portfolio includes McHughs Bar, The Kitchen Bar and The Thirsty Goat in Belfast as well as Derry venue Sugar nightclub and Downeys Bar in Magherafelt. The Group, which employs 200 people across the north, took on The Apartment in 2014 and the following year carried out a £750,000 refurbishment at the site to turn it into a great cosmopolitan-style bar.

The new venture is based upon the character Hell Cat Maggie, who was ‘born in Ireland and raised hell in New York’. She was a member of the infamous Irish American street gang, The Dead Rabbits, who became the largest Irish crime organization in mid 19th-century Manhattan and were the subject of the 2012 film, Gangs of New York. This is another addition to the many Belfast bar locations which have New York gang names such as Pug Ugly’s.