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A £750,000 revamp at Belfast bar Apartment has been fully completed this weekend.

The Donegall Square food and drink spot has been at the heart of the city centre since the year 2000, but this revamp offers a big departure for the venue.

Broken into two parts - upstairs and downstairs - work has seen a total reconfiguration of the upstairs bar and restaurant, while on the ground level the new 'Zak's Bar' opened last night.

Upstairs, the bar and restaurant have switched places, and there's now a chic roof terrace, that opened back in July.

Zak's Bar has gone from a coffee shop, which opened as a bar previously on a Friday and Saturday only, to a live music bar that will open six nights a week.

It opened with a soft launch on Saturday night.

Staffing is to go from 45 to around 60. In November 2013, Apartment was bought by The Downey Group and soon ambitious plans were drawn up to revamp the premises.

Speaking to Belfast Live while overlooking Belfast City Hall from a seat within Zak's Bar, general manager David Neely, said he was excited about finally completing the project - and opening the full complex to the public.

He said: "For a long time it was the bar in Belfast but I suppose over the years a lot of other bars came along and the standard in Belfast has definitely risen. Apartment fell behind through lack of investment."

But, not long after the Downey Group took over at the end of 2013, plans soon emerged for a huge facelift.

The first part of this was completed in July.

David continued: "Originally when you walked in you went upstairs and walked through the restaurant to go to the bar. So now we have a layout where you walk into the public bar area and the restaurant's at the back.

"We were able to put on a roof terrace at the back of the building by lifting the ladies toilets and moving that to another area."

The second part was to revamp the ground floor level - essentially a coffee shop that opened as a bar just on a Friday and Saturday night.

He said: "It was run as a coffee shop, so it opened from 7.30am. It did a very good coffee trade, but the bar side was only ever used at weekends: Friday and Saturday night.

"We saw it as a great space. It's ground level, passing trade - so we said that once we get upstairs down we'd definitely work on it downstairs.

"We wanted to have a bar down here that is both male and female friendly. So there'll be cocktails upstairs, but no cocktails down here.

"There'll be a good range of beers, wines and spirits. The menu is modern tapas. And we'll be doing something that Apartment has never done which is live music six nights a week."

He said that the response to the upstairs work had been positive - with food sales doubling on the same six week period last year.

"We're building the business: It's a very unique concept in that it's got breakfast to coffee to cocktails to drinks to late night entertainment," he said.

"I'm excited. It's finished very well - we have the classic albums up on the wall to reinforce the music aspect. It's a new departure and we're looking forward to showing people what we've done."