New plans have been filed for the redevelopment of the Mellieha Bay Hotel, with a reduced number of rooms when compared to previous plans.
The new plans propose a hotel with 359 guest bedrooms. This is a reduction from previous plans which proposed 421 guestrooms, and the gross floor area and the project’s footprint have also been downsized when compared to the previous plans.
Both the footprint and the gross floor area however remain significantly larger than the already existing hotel.
For this site, two development planning applications have been put forwards: PA/09876/19 which covers the demolition of the hotel and PA/01948/20 which covers the redevelopment of the hotel.
The site is located at L-Għadira, on the northern shore of Mellieħa Bay. The site lies within the Mellieħa Local Council administrative area.
These new plans come after the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reported that the proposed project will result in a “major negative impact.”
The description of the work reads that the hotel will comprise “359 guest bedrooms and ancillary facilities.”
The application was filed by Brian Mizzi, one of the owners of the Mizzi Organisation, and lists Edwin Mintoff as the project’s architect.
In October 2019, The Mellieha Bay Hotel announced that it was closing in preparation for a project that proposes to transform the 50-year-old hotel into a 5-star resort Company chairman Brian Mizzi had, at the time, said: “Today is a bitter-sweet moment as we end a 50-year chapter that has forged relationships between our staff and many repeat guests, and we set out to deliver a new resort that will take Mellieħa Bay Hotel to a new level.”
On 14 September, Environmental Resouces Authority (ERA) submitted its assessment and recommendations for the new plans.
The ERA did not object to this proposal. However, it still noted the impacts in relation to the geo-environment, agriculture, landscape character and visual amenities, as was identified in the EIA report.
It said that these considerations need to be “addressed at source through stringent measures and pre-emptive safeguards.”
The ERA also noted that although there have been improvements with regard to landscape character and visual amenities, the proposal will still have a “major visual impact that will substantially alter the aesthetics of the natural surroundings in a very negative way.”
“The internal accommodation will spread across 11 interconnected blocks of heights varying between one to seven-storey,” the ERA document said.
This is a change from previous plans which proposed six different interconnecting blocks with heights varying between four to eight storeys.
On the existing site, the footprint is 7,044m2. The footprint in the 2022 plans is 15,166m2, which is a reduction from the previous plans where the footprint was over 19,000m2.
The gross floor area of the existing site is 26,705m2. Whilst the gross floor area for the 2022 plans is 50,674m2, which is a reduction from the previous plans where the gross floor area was over 61,000m2.
“The existing Mellieha Bay Hotel complex occupies an area of c. 42,813m2, of which c. 15,635m2 lies outside of the Area for Restrained Redevelopment,”
The 2022 proposal occupies an area of approximately 42,145m2 with 12,329m2 outside of the Area for Restrained Redevelopment. Therefore, the proposal is displaying a reduction of approximately 668m2 and will reduce the area outside the Area for Restrained Redevelopment by 3,373m2.
Even though the ERA did not find any significant impact that the new plans could have on agriculture, it said that there has to be careful during the construction process so as not to damage any soil systems.
The ERA also pointed out that there should be more detail about any form of renewable energy which the hotel will be using.
ERA also noted how there is a lack of detail about how the foreground of the hotel will be returned to its original state.