Birzebbuga’s Water’s Edge Hotel set for expansion

Developer Charles Polidano is proposing a two-storey extension to the Water’s Edge Hotel, which already dominates views of Pretty Bay in Birżebbuġa.

The extension will comprise of an additional eight level, and a receded ninth level with overlying pool facilities.

Moreover, five floors, three of which are recessed, are proposed for an adjacent building, creating a stepped transition from a nearby five-storey structure and thereby minimising the creation of blank party walls.

Polidano is also seeking to regularise an outdoor aluminium enclosure and outdoor tables and chairs, and to reclassify the building from a guest house to a hotel.

The additional floors are being proposed under a policy that allows hotels to rise two floors above the height limitation set out in the local plan. The existing hotel was approved in 2007 as a “reconstruction of an already existing guest house”.

In 2022, an application by tuna magnate Charles Azzopardi to add two extra storeys to the seven-storey Sea Breeze Hotel was withdrawn following objections by 650 residents, including the local council.

The application was withdrawn after the case officer recommended refusal, citing that the Height Limitation Adjustment Policy for Hotels permits two additional floors above the height limitation set in the local plan only if “the resultant design features a high-quality product in keeping with the urban context and no blank walls are created.”

In that case, the exposed blank party walls on Triq il-Bajja s-Sabiħa were deemed to have a negative visual impact on the streetscape and urban context.