A court has revoked part of a planning permit for an eight-storey hotel to be built as part of a massive mixed-use development in Mellieħa.
The building, by a company linked to construction magnate Joseph Portelli, is already complete.
Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti upheld an appeal by the Mellieħa council against the development of a hotel with related amenities, which was approved despite having been recommended for refusal for breaching the area’s height limitation policy and running counter to the local plan.
The project, by Portelli’s business partner, Mark Agius, on behalf of Shopwise Developments M Limited, includes 121 residential units, shops, an underground parking and garages on a previously-vacant 3,600 square metre plot close to the Valyou supermarket. The plot abuts Triq Ħalq iċ-Ċawl, Triq l-Iżbark tal-Franċizi, Triq il-Fortizza and Triq in-Nases.
The council, which once sought to use the land for community facilities, argued that the project was overly-intensive and incompatible with its surroundings. The fight against this development was spearheaded by PN MP Robert Cutajar.
It had been headed for refusal after a negative recommendation by the PA case officer but the PA board still went ahead and approved the project in March 2019.
The case officer had concluded that the eight storeys proposed fell foul of the height limitation policy, which allows three floors and, under a special adjustment policy for hotels, an extra two floors over and above that.
Nevertheless, the case officer found the project acceptable in principle from a planning point of view and concluded that it was unlikely to have significant environmental or traffic impact.
The court heard how the council had appealed the permit before the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal which last June sent the application back to the PA board to reconsider the project with a hotel of not more than 30 rooms.
However, the council appealed this decision again before the Court of Appeal, arguing that the tribunal was wrong as the hotel was not permitted since the area was not earmarked in the local plan as somewhere where a hotel could be developed.
The court, in its judgment, said it was “a fact” that the local plan excluded the possibility of developing a hotel on the site in question unless there were “overriding reasons” for the permit to be granted and as long as there was no “cumulative adverse impact on the locality”.
“If the area was compromised by other hotels one would understand… but the fact alone that there is a supermarket and a petrol station does not make a hotel an overriding reason why the local plan should be discarded,” the court ruled.
“Apart from this, with the proliferation of hotels in the area, there will be a detrimental effect on the residential area with resultant adverse effects on the residential community due to an increase in commercial developments that the local plan did not provide for,” the court added.
Mr Justice Chetcuti, therefore, upheld the appeal and revoked the permit where it approved a hotel and amenities and confirmed the rest of the permit where it allowed a mixed development with retail and residential units.