Malaga's hotel boom reaches Capuchinos district with opening of its first four-star hotel

In recent years, Capuchinos has seen exponential growth in the number of tourist accommodation complexes. Some of the projects have managed to avoid the three-year moratorium the city council approved this past July.

The new Zenit hotel on Carrera de Capuchinos opened a few days ago. It offers 62 rooms, some of which have a terrace, including duplex suites with a terrace. It also features a swimming pool and sunbathing area, as well as a gym, a 70-square-metre conference room and an underground car park with charging points for electric vehicles.

The restaurant, called Nadir, will be run by Restauración Santa Cruz, which already works with Zenit Hotels in Madrid and Pamplona.

Designed by Basque architect Izaskun Larzabal, the hotel comprises a ground floor, two upper floors and an attic, as well as two basement levels. One of its distinctive features is that it has incorporated into its structure a 17th-century square-plan cistern, crowned by a dome, which may have served as a pottery-making site in the area.

The design has also preserved four sections of a water conduit from the San Telmo aqueduct: a unique piece of infrastructure that brought water to the city centre from the Guadalmedina basin in the 18th century.

In May, the city council initially approved the planning application to expand Zenit's second hotel in Malaga with a new building right next to the new hotel. A ruling by the regional ministry of culture, however, has put this expansion project on hold for the time being, due to the impossibility of merging the plots, as they are near a site of cultural interest without any specific urban planning protection in place, namely the San Telmo aqueduct.

This is not the only hotel being under development in the northern part of the city centre. On Calle Dos Aceras, Abit Living has constructed a building that will house either a hostel or a boutique hotel.

On a plot of land near Calle Capuchinos 32, Iberia Reim, a capital management firm specialising in property investment, will construct a building comprising 27 holiday flats as part of the Arabí Living investment vehicle.

Meanwhile, the city council has initiated the planning process to demolish the Telefónica building on Alameda de Capuchinos 43 and make way for a hotel designed by architect Carlos Domingo Corpas, who also designed the recently new ME Málaga hotel.

It will be a three-star hotel, comprising a ground floor plus four floors, a roof and a basement, with capacity for around 60 rooms across a built area of approximately 2,700 square metres. The building has been acquired by the company INDES Tech, which will continue to lease it to Telefónica until next year.

Similarly, plans have been announced for a three-star hotel on a plot of land where 36 homes were originally due to be built, also on Alameda de Capuchinos. This project, comprising 130 rooms, has been designed by HCP. It involves the construction of a building with a floor area of around 4,000 square metres.

Furthermore, last December the urban planning department granted planning permission for a block of 24 holiday flats with a swimming pool on Alameda de Capuchinos 54, opposite the Telefónica building.

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