It has been a busy few weeks for Lowry Building & Civil Engineering as the company has completed the impressive refurbishment of The Doyen and also won the prestigious Best Commercial Project at the FMB Master Builder Awards in London.

The Doyen, formerly the iconic King’s Head pub, has been completely transformed into a 15,000sqft entertainment and dining complex at Lisburn Road, Belfast as part of a £4.2million investment by the Wine Inns group.
The extensive building programme has created a modern bar and restaurant.

The Doyen now features a traditional public bar serving a top-quality, gastropub menu daily with a large outdoor seating area; a stylish café bar; a family-friendly, Italian-themed restaurant upstairs called Morso seating 130 people; and private rooms catering for parties up to 140. There is even a secret snug bar, catering for 30 people.

The main bar has been created to offer live entertainment and is also equipped with indoor, outdoor and drop-down screens to cater for sports fans.

The work carried out by Lowry Building & Civil Engineering involved the complete strip- out of the existing premises and major structural alterations to accommodate a bold and striking new contemporary vision.

This was achieved with the construction of a single-storey extension to provide additional toilet facilities and the upgrading and strengthening of an existing flat roof to provide an exciting new external terrace area with fixed awnings.

Major internal alterations were completed to all bar areas and existing function rooms and a large first floor void area was infilled to create additional restaurant space.

The client, Wine Inns owns a number of well-known Belfast venues, including The Empire, the Alibi club and The Chelsea, and Lowry Building & Civil Engineering worked closely with the client to ensure that the new vision for this iconic venue could be realised.

FMB AWARD
The high standard of the finish at The Doyen, however, should be of little surprise, given the award-winning pedigree of Lowry Building & Civil Engineering.

The company won the Best Commercial Project at the FMB’s Master Builder Awards 2017 for another impressive hospitality project.
The award was presented to the team for the redevelopment of the Silverbirch Hotel, a picturesque property in Omagh which serves as the perfect base from which to explore the surrounding Northern Ireland tourist attractions.

What impressed the judges most was that the extensive work was completed in a ‘live hotel’, where it was essential that the functionality of the business was preserved while the work was being carried out. The result is spectacular and the business has now re-established itself as one of the leading wedding and conference venues in Northern Ireland, with bookings already exceeding targets for the coming year.

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB said: “Lowry Building & Civil Engineering had to complete each phase of the build to strict criteria, before being allowed to progress to the next stage. The fact that they did so on time, on budget and to the highest standards – in a ‘live hotel’ – is testament as to why they are the worthy winner in this category”.

The project, which involved the complete refurbishment of the hotel together with an extension, added capacity to entertain more than 1,000 guests, creating a space that is unrivalled by other local venues.

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