The Metrovacesa construction company intends to build two 29-storey residential towers and a third 23-storey hotel next to the Torrevieja marina, on the beachfront, and next to the historic El Acequión canal in Torrevieja.
These buildings are part of an elaborate plan formulated by the council which will see almost twenty skyscrapers built in the town, in a direct likeness of Benidorm.
However, the Metrovacesa project had an unfavourable report from the Alicante Coastal Service, part of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. This is a report, dated October 8, 2018, in which the Department of Coasts questions the defects in the Detailed Study due to lack of documentation as well as deficiencies in the processing of a specific modification to the Torrevieja General Plan of Urban Plan that would allow the construction of the towers.
Thus, the construction company filed an appeal against the report, which was eemed to be inadmissible by the Ministry for Ecological Transition, arguing that it is a simple procedural act that does not prevent the continuation of the project.
Now, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJ-CV) has partially upheld the company’s appeal, paving the way for the construction of the towers.
However, the sentence does not accept Metrovacesa’s observation that the report for the approval of the Detailed Study of El Acequión be interpreted as favourable.
The State Attorney argued that the construction company’s appeal was inadmissible as it considered it to be a procedural act.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TSJ-CV concludes, to the contrary, that the opinion of the Provincial Service of Coasts of Alicante is a “qualified procedure act” that prevents the continuation of the procedure due to its binding and negative nature in the case of the three buildings, “deciding the fate” of the urban project.
The sentence recalls that, as a consequence of the negative report, the Environmental Assessment Commission of the Generalitat Valenciana issued on September 26, 2019 an Environmental and Territorial Strategic Declaration that was unfavourable toward the Detailed Study presented by the construction company. The TSJ-CV refuses to interpret the opinion as favourable, as requested by the company.
The resolution argues that deficiencies have been recognised in the Detailed Study presented that affect the easements to which the land where the towers are located, as well as their delimitation and use, are subject. “What conditions”, it adds, “its approval or that its assessment may be positive, for which it cannot be accepted that the report be accepted as favourable to its approval, without prejudice, of course, to the right of the party [Metrovacesa] to present a new one that corrects such deficiencies”.
“The most evident proof that the objections are serious, well-founded and appropriate”, states the TSJ-CV, is that the drafting team of the Detailed Study project, in its response to the opinion of the Coastal Service, admits a modification of the document “to match those demands and adapt it.”
