Alex Trelinski
A 21-YEAR paralysis of a controversial Villajoyosa hotel project is set to be resolved by a partial demolition to bring it into line with building regulations.
The Atrium Beach hotel development on La Cala de la Vila seafront is owned by Hotel Luna SA who are behind the Benidorm chain, Magic Costa Blanca.
The company had a licence to build an 11-storey hotel but constructed 21 floors instead, without anybody in authority intervening as the illegal structure rose into the skyline.
Villajoyosa council has now advertised for an outside contractor to draft a demolition project for €112,000 with the deadline for bidders being this week.
The plan is to slash the building’s size in order to grant licences and actually get the structure finished and operational as a hotel.
Construction stopped in 2003 after two accidents caused the death of three workers.
It also emerged that seven orders demanding a development stoppage were issued by Villajoyosa council between 2002 and 2003, due to the hotel reaching almost twice the size of what had been permitted.
For the last two decades, lawyers representing the council and Hotel Luna SA have been kept busy, and even signed agreements to make the project viable.
One of those deals involved a smaller partial demolition of the excess buildable area but it still broke the law and was blocked by judges.
Hotel Luna SA even went to the Constitutional Court in 2022 to try to save the entire current structure, which had been 90% completed.
Villajoyosa council made its latest move over the ‘ghost’ hotel in September by pursuing a demolition project tender as part of its Interior Reform Plan to reorganise the land there and to get an eventually smaller building open as a hotel.
READ MORE:
- Infamous ‘ghost’ hotel in southern Spain will finally be destroyed – 50 YEARS after construction began
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