More high-rise: Corinthia’s project includes two towers

The International Hotel Investments group, the hotels group that owns the Corinthia brand and the recently acquired Island Hotels group, is planning its own high-rise towers on the site of the Radisson SAS hotel at St George’s Bay.

Its six-star luxury hotel project, unveiled in 2015 together with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat but without any hint of high-rise, will comprise a €400 million investment spread over the 76,000 square metres of land occupied by the Raddison and Corinthia hotels.

A business source told this newspaper that the two towers, in comparable height with those proposed on a nearby site by hotelier Silvio Debono’s Seaport Franchising, will be erected on the site of the Radisson hotel.

The Radisson was part of the collection owned by the Zahra family’s Island Hotels, the group acquired for €50 million by IHI plc.

MaltaToday is informed that IHI plans to replace the Radisson with two towers, with a continuous development of other apartment blocks along the shoreline, retaining the Corinthia San Gorg hotel, and culminating in a three-block apartment complex of at over six storeys in place of the Marina Hotel.

The IHI towers will bring the total of high-rise towers to seven towers in the St Julian’s and St George’s Bay area enabled by the Labour government’s generous high-rise policy.

Two high-rise buildings, including a 44-storey tower, are in the pipeline by the owners of the St George’s Park complex – the Testaferrata Group – and by Paul Xuereb of PX Lettings in a portion of land behind the Intercontinental Hotel. Xuereb intends building a 29-storey five-star hotel.

These latest two projects, which are still on the drawing board, could be expected to join other developments proposed for the area, including the site currently housing the Institute of Tourism Studies, Villa Rosa and Mercury House.

The Hard Rock hotel that Seaport Franchising plan to develop on the site of the ITS college at St George’s Bay. Towering behind it will be the new Corinthia towers

The former ITS land will be the site of two high-rise towers for Silvio Debono’s hotels group, a Hard Rock franchisee; Villa Rosa, owned by developer Anton Camilleri ‘il-Franciz’, will see a striking Zaha Hadid concept for a 36-storey tower and a development stretching all the way from Cresta Quay to Moynihan House in a vessel-like creation; and Mercury House in Paceville will be developed into a 40-storey complex by Gozitan developer Joseph Portelli.

Additionally, the Tigné peninsula in Sliema is braced for a 38-storey tower for the Townsquare project developed by the Gasan Group, and a 40-storey tower hotel proposed by Gap Holdings on the site of the Fort Cambridge officers’ mess.