Hotel Plevna set to rise by four more floors

A planning application has been presented to add three more floors to the Plevna Hotel, located in the corner between Locker, Thornton and Hughes Hallet Street in Sliema, a highly residential area in Qui-Si-Sana. 

The application also foresees an additional receded floor at roof level bring the total number of storeys to 10. The development is proposed by Roosendaal Hotels Ltd, and will overshadow three neighbouring townhouses and rise higher than other apartment blocks in the area.

The local plan already permits six-floor apartment blocks in the area. But the policy on hotel heights approved in 2014 allows two extra storeys over and above the local plan limits.  Moreover the application also refers to the development guidelines approved in 2015, which calculates building heights in metres rather than floors. This policy will enable developers to add extra storeys in cases where existing floors are lower than the stipulated height in metres.

The hotel is located in a highly residential area in Tigne and a short distance away from the proposed 40-storey and 38-storey behemoths, one on top of the Fort Cambridge barracks and the other in the area earmarked for the town square, which abuts on Hughes Hallet Street.

A Project Development Statement for the Fort Cambridge project has warned that development risks “elbowing residents” from the area.

The document warns that the new 40-storey hotel may encourage “further investment in commercial activities”, which could result in “pressures on existing uses, which could be residential, to be elbowed out of the area”.

For the past decade residents of this particular area of Sliema have experienced daily hardships with cranes blocking normal traffic circulation in Thornton Street, Locker Street, MacIver Street, Tigné Street, Hughes Hallet Street, Mattew Pulis Street and Pace Street.