{"id":685918,"date":"2026-07-11T11:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/685918\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T11:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:27:10","slug":"smithfield-market-dirty-windows-broken-lights-and-no-communication-life-as-trader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/685918\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithfield Market: Dirty windows, broken lights and no communication, life as trader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gilmore is not alone in his concerns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alan Taylor owns Coffee &amp; Heroes which has been in Smithfield for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He opened the caf\u00e9 and comic book shop as he had &#8220;happy memories&#8221; of the market as a child.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;In general, Smithfield has been good to us, but there&#8217;s definitely a sense of being slightly ignored, certainly when it comes to other markets in Belfast or other places,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You look at the outside of the building, you look at some of the issues there, but you try make a place where people want to come to and you know go from there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Taylor said a &#8220;tiny bit of advertising, a tiny coat of paint&#8221; would improve the space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that he believes the council has a responsibility that it is &#8220;not particularly&#8221; meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The last meeting we had was around two years ago and that was to let us know there were rent increases and there were three units went out of business within three months of that,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As long as you pay your rent, you literally do not hear a word from the council.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gilmore is not alone in his concerns. Alan Taylor owns Coffee &amp; Heroes which has been in Smithfield&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-685918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}