A council has voted to send in the wrecking ball to a popular park, as protesters gathered outside City Hall demanding their politicians call off the destruction.

Marine Gardens in Bangor will now be scrapped to make way for a car park, despite a battle from local residents determined to save it.

The DUP and UUP together voted to get rid of the green space, after a protracted debate that stretched well after 10pm on Wednesday night.

An Alliance move to delay the decision for a couple of months to check out alternatives was defeated, after a property developer behind a wider £60m revamp of the city’s seafront told the council any setbacks could see the whole scheme fail.

placeholder image — Protesters confronted councillors on their way in to Bangor City Hall this evening, ahead of a crunch vote on axing seafront park Marine Gardens. Photo: Iain Gray/News Letter

“One month [delay] scares me, never mind two,” Damian Mitchell of Bangor Marine said.

The £60m overhaul of the Queen’s Parade area is already decades late, plans coming and going since the end of the last century. Now finally in construction, the scheme has already demolished a 200-space car park.

But the developer wants it reworked, adding a children’s play area; a pay-and-display facility is vital to it, the developer says, and Marine Gardens the only possible location.

According to Mr Mitchell, any delay approving the car park would mean they couldn’t buy materials from suppliers, including an international firm that’s to create the play area. In a volatile economy that would mean prices shoot up, he argued, so the play park could wind up costing far more or possibly fall through altogether, risking the overall revamp.

Alliance councillor Chris McCracken pointed out that although the developer signalled it wanted to rework plans in August, the final designs were only presented to politicians last Monday – leaving just nine days before the crunch decision on axing the park.

“I don’t think nine days allows us to do our due diligence,” he said, but unionists pointed to the risk to the overall scheme as reason to plough ahead.

The DUP sounded some misgivings about the timeframe, but the party’s position was encapsulated by councillor Alistair Cathcart. Admitting he was “not happy about every single thing”, he stated: “I can’t risk looking at an empty site for another generation.”

Scrapping Marine Gardens was approved by a majority of seven votes.