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David Lerma
Marbella
Friday, 22 November 2024, 16:04
"After eight years there have been changes due to urban planning and commercial reasons. Production costs have gone up. When we bought this land, we signed with Marriot to build a W brand resort, but now we are in negotiations to change the brand to a higher category. I can't say which one," Juan Luis Segalerva, representative of the investment fund Platinum Estates, who for business confidentiality reasons cannot reveal which, told SUR on Thursday 21 November.
"It is the best beachfront in Marbella because it is a dune. It's not well maintained, it's not clean and it's not reformed. We are going to have a Cadiz beach, but in Marbella and without the wind," he told SUR. The original budget, around 250 million, is now rising and will exceed 350 million, he said.
"We are in the middle of that negotiation, although I can say that it will be a five-star luxury brand. The new project will reduce the 186 rooms initially planned with the Marriott group to 150. "As it will be a superior brand, there will be fewer rooms but they will be bigger". On the other hand, for the flat area, the construction of up to 206 residential units is authorised, but in the current project, Segalerva assured, "only approximately 170 are contemplated".
"Apart from the hotel, the construction plan includes a beach club, three restaurants and residents will have access to all the hotel's services. The planning has been approved, but we have not yet applied for planning permission," he acknowledged. However, the company has submitted an urban project to the town hall, which is necessary to give shape to the initiative. The project has also been sent to the directorate general of roads, which depends on the Ministry of Transport, for the development of the vehicle access along the A-7 motorway.
Regarding the dune environment of the URP-AL-6 sector, Segalerva insists that "it will be respected. A concern we have had since we bought the land and thought about the project. Not only did we want to respect the dunes, but we also included a project to integrate it into a landscaping project". In any case, respect for the ecosystem is one of the conditions that the Junta de Andalucía has imposed on the investor group for the definitive approval of the modification of parts of the 1986 PGOU for the Las Dunas Club.
In 2021, the association Ecologistas Malaka opposed the modification of this area of the town, considering the risks of "fragmentation and destruction" of the ecosystem of the surroundings of what was then to be called the W hotel. In other reasons, it claimed that the plot, which occupies some 154,170 square metres, was then classified "as a general system of free areas, a suburban park". Despite the surrounding urban development, the environmentalists considered that it still maintained "the complete dune values".
This has not been the only stumbling block that Platinum Estates has had to face. In January 2022, during a council meeting in Marbella, the project was provisionally approved, after six years of negotiations and with favourable sectorial reports from the environment, coastal and roads authorities. The Junta de Andalucía had included the project in its project accelerator the previous year due to its "special regional interest". Everything seemed to be going well.
However, in November 2023, the BOJA Official Gazette published an order from the Consejería de Fomento, Articulación del Territorio y Vivienda which suspended the modification of the PGOU on the Las Chapas site, contrary to the town hall's approval, "due to substantial deficiencies" with respect to the Andalusian urban planning law. The town hall was then unable to justify the suspension of the 30 per cent reserved for the construction of social housing.
Seven years after the visit of the then mayor José Bernal to Hong Kong to announce the project and the one made a year later by the current mayor, Ángeles Muñoz, to say that it would be ready by 2021, months later the investor group mentioned the collapse of Marbella's town planning department.
Everything started to change at the end of June 2024, with the conclusion of the dossier for the project known as Las Dunas Club, after the unanimous approval of the complete technical document, with the corrected modifications of the PGOU, which were approved by the Junta and which until Thursday were pending publication in the BOJA, as announced by the town planning councillor, José Eduardo Díaz. The process had been long and complicated" he said.
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