The Planning Authority has turned down plans for an 88-room aparthotel in a residential area in Swieqi to the relief of the local council and dozens of residents who opposed the project.
The Planning Commission board on Tuesday voted unanimously against the development due to the area’s residential zoning and the hotel’s planned 10 storeys, above the height limitation for the area.
The application sought to build an 88-room hotel, underground parking and related amenities, including a mini-market and roof-top pool, on a vacant plot off Triq is-Swieqi and extending to the roads behind, around 250 metres from the underpass leading to Paceville and St George’s Bay.
The site is surrounded mostly by two- and three-storey terraced houses, as well as a few taller apartment blocks, and is zoned as a Residential Priority Area, where only residential applications are meant to be considered.
Site is zoned as a Residential Priority Area
In its objection, the Swieqi local council argued that the proposal represented overdevelopment due to the traffic it would generate, as well as bad-neighbourliness due to the noise and general disturbance, not least from delivery and service vehicles.
“Swieqi is under constant siege from developers, and the quality of life of our residents is under threat,” the council said.
“The area’s present traffic management system is very poor and cannot cater for more traffic. We rely on the Planning Authority to defend our basic right to a decent living environment.”
Residents who opposed the project argued that it would negatively impact the local community, increasing congestion, pollution and noise levels.
“Approval of this development will surely pave the way for the Paceville and the leisure industry to encroach and effectively take over this residential zone,” one resident wrote in a submission to the PA.
The Swieqi community has for years sounded the alarm over the slow creep of commercial activity outwards from Paceville towards the residential areas at the peri-phery of the town.
Last June, despite the council’s protests, the PA approved an eight-storey, 104-bedroom hotel to replace a two-storey house in nearby Lourdes Lane, a residential buffer zone in which only small-scale uses are allowed and which is so far characterised by two-storey residential buildings.