There are a few father and daughter duos at the helm of businesses here in Northern Ireland, but not many in charge of businesses on the scale of Belfast’s Custom House.
Motor trade entrepreneur and property investor Neil McKibbin is the well-known face behind the £9 million investment which has transformed one of Belfast’s landmark buildings from a down at heel HMRC office building into an award-winning serviced office centre. But it’s his 24-year old daughter Kathryn who keeps a close eye on what’s going on around the building, as well as helping to oversee a project to create more services office space at another of McKibbin’s buildings, Victoria House on Gloucester Street.
What’s more, she splits her working week between the two city centre buildings and a job as a pharmacist.
“I enjoy the contrast,” says Kathryn. “I like meeting and helping people in the pharmacy, but it’s rewarding to see how the companies who have made Custom House their home, as well as visitors, enjoy being here. This place seems to make an impression on everyone who comes here.”
Neil McKibbin bought the Custom House at the height of the Covid pandemic in August of 2020. Renovation work started in April of 2021 and ran for 21 months until January, 2023. “We had to rip out everything inside the building and start from scratch,” he says. “But we were always determined to create something really special, and to put something back into the city.”
That’s exactly what the McKibbins have achieved. Custom House is a listed building designed by renowned architect Charles Lanyon (also responsible for Queen’s University) and completed in 1857 at a cost of £30,000. But it took a considerably more substantial investment to get it to where it is today.
“We want it to be a statement piece, and I think that’s what we’ve done,” says Neil McKibbin with characteristic understatement. It might be a serviced office centre, but it looks and feels more like a five-star hotel with its marble floors, wide staircases, paintings, ornaments, high-spec bathrooms and the rest.
Inside, its tenant organisations can enjoy top of the line coffee machines, a full cafe/restaurant in the spectacular basement, a fully equipped gym, numerous lounge areas, boardrooms, an outdoor terrace and showers.
“We initially wanted to partner with a management organisation who could run Custom House for us,” adds Kathryn McKibbin. “But we soon realised that it wasn’t the right direction for us to go in. So we’ve built our own team.”
It’s a team that is led by General Manager Richard Taylor, a man with a strong pedigree in the hospitality sector. He’s every inch a front of house manager, while the McKibbins see themselves as back of house observers.
“We always wanted to take a hospitality led approach to how we do things here,” Kathryn adds. “The staff that we have here have definitely added another layer to our investment and what we’ve created here.”
Custom House today plays host to wide range of resident organisations ranging from US-owned tech companies through to design agencies, recruitment specialists and a wide range of others, both small and large.
It’s already proved popular with FDI projects. US-based visitors, to a man and woman, have been impressed by Custom House’s blend of historic building, grand entrance and leading edge facilities with that emphasis on hospitality.
With its origins during the Covid era, Custom House started to offer top-class serviced office accommodation at precisely the right time, when every organisation was reviewing its working practices and office space requirements.
“Most employers based here are working on a hybrid model in some way or another,” says Neil McKibbin. “But there’s no doubt that we’re seeing more and more office-based work going on these days.
“Being based here means that companies can offer their employees the very best of facilities and working conditions. That’s even more important in this day and age, when almost every organisation has to work hard not just to recruit the right people, but to retain them.”
Over at Victoria House, Kathryn McKibbin is overseeing a project to transform two floors in the multi-storey office building, also into high-specification office accommodation.
“There is a real demand at the moment for high quality space on the serviced office basis,” she says. “We’re creating something which won’t be exactly the same as we’re doing here at the Custom House but it will be high-end and it will offer a real alternative to companies wanting a good city centre base.”