Xlendi: Portelli 14-storey hotel looms over bay

Construction magnate’s Joseph Portelli’s Excel Limited has presented plans for a 14-storey hotel that will replace a four-storey building at Xlendi, on the bay’s promontory up on Triq Xmun.

The plans were presented by business partner Mark Agius, on behalf of Excel, in which Portelli and Daniel Refalo are also directors.

The Planning Authority has already approved the demolition of the building, in an application approved in January 2021. But the PA also said this did not entail any commitment for the replacement building.

The original plans foresaw the excavation of the hotel’s parking levels, while earmarking the site for the development of a massive 13-storey hotel for the project’s second phase. These last plans were omitted from the application and the permit was limited to the demolition and no longer foresaw the excavation of the site.

The existing building has yet to be demolished.

The latest application is for a 4-star hotel with 88 rooms, to become the highest building overlooking the Xlendi coastline, with four underground floors for a car park, gym and indoor pool, and 14 storeys above street level with a roof pool.

In 2021 the Munxar local council – as well as eNGOs Flimkien Ghall Ambjent Ahjar and Moviment Graffitti – had objected to the splitting of the application in two phases. The Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) had also called for the holistic assessment of both phase 1 and phase 2 of the project.

Mayor Damien Christ Spiteri insisted that although no excavation would be allowed at this stage, the demolition of the buildings would still create a quarry due to the configuration of the site.

Residents also expressed concern that works in the area would endanger their homes built in the 1980s.

The PA’s planning commission chairman Claude Mallia insisted that the approval of the demolition did not entail a commitment on the future of the site and said he understood the concern about the possible development, encouraging further discussion on the matter.

Excel is also proposing building another complex of 60 apartments nearby in a separate planning application that is pending appeal.