Graffitti slams plan to ‘bury residents’ as db says it is simply using unused floor area

Moviment Graffitti has hit out at db Group’s bid to increase the height of its controversial development on the former Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) site in Pembroke, warning that the plan will “further bury the residents of the area.”

The db Group on the other hand says its request simply reflects unused floor area permitted under existing policies.

The developer is seeking permission to add six and seven storeys to its two residential towers, lifting one tower to 23 storeys and the other to 25. No additional height is being proposed for the approved 12-storey Hard Rock hotel. If approved, the changes would result in 82 additional apartments over and above the 162 already permitted.

In its defence, a spokesperson for db Group pointed to the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) applicable to the Pembroke site—a planning tool that sets the maximum allowable built-up floor space in relation to the size of a site. 

The group argued that when its 17- and 18-storey towers were approved in 2021, they did not make full use of the Gross Floor Area (GFA) allowed. “Surplus GFA was available to the developer but never utilised,” the company said.

But Moviment Graffitti lashed out at the planning process which it described as “a permit dishing” system for allowing piecemeal applications like this one.

According to Graffitti the repeated, incremental amendments prevent any holistic assessment of a project’s impact.

“This is the opposite of sound planning,” Graffitti stated, describing the entire process as a farce driven by “an oligarchic system that runs roughshod over the common good in the pursuit of profits for the few.”

Graffitti also warned that “adding more storeys to this unprecedented monstrosity” would generate even more unsustainable activity in close proximity to residents and protected sites, calling the proposed increases “emblematic of the government-sponsored greed and disrespect for the people that has taken hold in our country.”

The NGO also noted the development was approved on the basis of a tunnel intended to ease traffic—a tunnel that Graffitti says “was always nonsensical” and is now officially off the table.

“And yet they are now seeking to intensify a development that was approved on the basis of infrastructure that will never exist,” Graffitti said.

The latest requested changes represent the fourth modification in height for the development. Originally, the project was proposed as a 38-storey tower and a 17-storey hotel, but the permit was revoked by the law courts due to a conflict of interest involving a Planning Authority board member.

In April 2020, the company put forward new plans reducing the residential tower to 31 floors. A few months later, the plans were revised again to accommodate two towers—one of 17 floors and another of 18—alongside the 12-storey hotel that was eventually approved. At the time, db Group said it had “listened and acted” after public and institutional feedback, by voluntarily lowering the height and splitting the original tower into two.