Danny Byrne (left) and Mike Rast Jr. discuss redevelopment plans in the Crumlin Road area. CLICK HERE or on the photo above for video. For pictures from GlobalAtlanta's tour of Crumlin Road, CLICK HERE.

A Belfast, Northern Ireland, community seeks to transform its historic jail that most recently housed political prisoners into a multi-use complex including a museum and shops.

The ambitious project is open to outside investors who wish to participate in Belfast’s anticipated growth in the same manner that undeveloped areas in Atlanta have been turned around.

The North Belfast Community Action Unit, charged with reviving one of the most divided neighborhoods in the city, plans to renovate the empty Victorian-era prison and adjacent former barracks into a tourism, shopping and community center.

Taking on a project that is an urban regeneration, historic preservation and community empowerment scheme rolled into one might seem daunting, but Danny Byrne, a member of the action unit, is optimistic.

“There’s huge potential for the site,” he said.  “What we want to do is make use of it to maximize the benefit for the community.  It doesn’t belong to one side, it belongs to the whole community.”

The unit, set up in 2002 by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, is eager to capitalize on Belfast’s growing tourism industry and is making presentations to businesspeople who might be interested in the project.

Susie McCullough, marketing director for the Belfast Visitor and Convention Bureau, told GlobalAtlanta that tourism has quadrupled over past three years, with 1.2 million international visitors to the city in 2007.

GlobalAtlanta toured the jail on the recommendation of Tim Losty, who visited Atlanta during his time as head of the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington, now in the first and deputy ministers’ office, as an example of tourism initiatives there.

Belfast is undergoing significant tourism development, particularly in the new Titanic Quarter, but older areas face particular challenges because of their experiences during Northern Ireland’s civil conflict and the need to preserve historic sites and neighborhoods.

Preliminary plans for the prison include two of the four wings being turned into a museum and the others into a hotel or hostel.  Buildings that formerly housed guards are to be renovated as a restaurant and an international art gallery, and yards that prisoners once walked are to be turned into community gardens.

The community action unit is raising funds for the redevelopment project this year by hosting a “businessperson ransom,” in which local business leaders are to be “imprisoned” in the jail until their company makes a donation.

Barry Gilligan, owner of a Belfast development company, bought Crumlin Road Courthouse, a Victorian building across the street from the jail.  He plans to turn it into a hotel and make it part of the prison tour.

The courthouse is attached to the jail by an underground passageway, used to move prisoners to and from trial without using the street.  Mr. Byrne said that Mr. Gilligan intends to preserve one courtroom as it looked when the building opened in 1850.

Officially named Her Majesty’s Prison Belfast, the jail was abandoned in 1996 and has fallen into disrepair, but parts have already been renovated and are used for tours, performances and presentations for potential investors.

The combined jail and courthouse are to form an urban gateway over Crumlin Road to north Belfast when both are redeveloped.

The community action unit is also looking for investors to refurbish Girdwood Army Barracks, adjacent to the jail.

The large barracks complex, vacated by the British Army in 2005, is to be turned into housing, office and retail space, sports fields and a recreation center.  Additions to nearby Mater Infirmorum Hospital and St. Malachy’s College, a Catholic middle and high school, are also planned for the site.

The prison and barracks are seen by local people as symbols of Northern Ireland’s decades-long civil conflict between nationalists, mostly Catholic, wanting to join the Irish Republic, and majority Protestant loyalists who wish to remain in the United Kingdom.

Crumlin Road and Girdwood Barracks were flashpoints in the conflict—known locally as “the Troubles,” as the combined 27 acres sits between traditionally Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

The prison held many members of nationalist and loyalist paramilitary groups, who even incarcerated tried to destroy each other.  Mr. Byrne said that Irish Republican Army prisoners killed two loyalists with a bomb in the mess hall.

The barracks was a frequent target of paramilitary groups and the nearby neighborhoods echoed with individual acts of violence.  Mary McAleese, current Irish president, was forced to flee her home in north Belfast in the 1970s because of loyalist attacks on her family.

The conflict ended in 1998, when the province’s major political parties signed the Belfast Agreement, but Mr. Byrne said the communities remain sharply divided.

One of the goals in the renovation project is to provide common living space for both Catholics and Protestants.

“Unfortunately the two groups don’t live together, there’s still that segregation,” Mr. Byrne said.  “But this, hopefully, can be a place where they can meet.  It’s right in the middle.”

Opened in 1845, the prison held common criminals until the 20th century, when political prisoners became prominent residents.  Famous inmates have included Éamon de Valera, a president and prime minister of the Irish Republic, and leaders of nationalist and loyalist paramilitary groups.

Longtime political rivals Gerry Adams, leader of nationalist Sinn Féin, and Ian Paisley, former Democratic Unionist Party boss and First Minister of Northern Ireland, both served time in Crumlin Road Gaol.

It also held suffragettes, women protesters demanding the right to vote in the early 20th century.

The prison was opened June 13 by Margaret Ritchie, Northern Ireland’s Minister for Social Development, and is available for guided tours until September 2008.

Sites on the tour include the execution cell and a demonstration of the trap door, where 17 people were hanged while it was in use.  A former visitors’ room now serves as an exhibition venue, displaying artifacts from the prison’s history.

The prison provided an eerie setting for Replay Productions’ performance of William Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” during a Belfast arts festival in 2007.

The British Broadcasting Corp. filmed parts of Crumlin Road Gaol for a documentary airing later this year on the last man hanged there, Robert McGladdery, executed in 1961 for the murder of Pearl Gamble.  Santa Monica, Calif.-based television commercial producer Below the Radar Studios also used the jail as a setting.