PA set to say no to ‘bad neighbour’ 10-storey Milner Street hotel

A proposed 10-storey hotel in Milner Street in Sliema should be refused because it will create a “bad neighbour development” in a residential area where hotels are not allowed, a case officer concluded in a report.

The report will the basis on which the Planning Authority will take a decision on 29 October.

As proposed the new 27-room hotel will add seven additional storeys and a receded top floor on the existing two storey townhouse whose façade will be retained.

Although the site is only a short distance away from the seafront and other similar hotels, the immediate locality is still residential in nature and “a new hotel use will create bad neighbourliness in this residential area.”

Moreover, according to the case officer the proposed hotel is not eligible to benefit from a policy allowing hotels to qualify for two more storeys over and above the height limitation in the local plan, as it will create an exposed blank party wall which will negatively impact on the site’s broader context.

The policy in question stipulates that “no blank walls are created” by hotels benefitting from extra floors.

Over the past year the developers changed their original plans, reducing the proposed development from 13 to 10 storeys and the number of proposed rooms from 56 to 27.

Sliema’s Milner Street is zoned in the local plan as a residential area where new hotels are not normally permitted.

But over the past years the PA has approved a number of hotel developments in this area, including the recently approved redevelopment of the Astra Hotel which will rise to 15 stories at the corner between Milner Street and Tower Road.

On that occasion, the case officer noted the designation of Milner Street as a residential area, but justified the development on the basis of other hotel commitments, including the Europa Hotel and the Park Hotel, and the fact that Sliema itself is designated as a tourism zone.

If approved the hotel proposed by Bonnici Brothers would further extend the hotel area into the residential neighbourhood.