UK: Plans for a £23 million aparthotel have been recommended for refusal by officials in Belfast City Council due to a lack of wastewater treatment infrastructure.
The 87-key project on Apollo Road, next to Windsor Park, is one of two south Belfast aparthotels proposed by developer Paddy Kearney’s Kilmona Group.
Kearney’s Loughview Leisure Group includes the Ten Square hotel in Belfast city centre, and the company intends for the aparthotels to carry the Ten Square flag.
Centred on the Adelaide Business Centre, next to the Hovis factory, the application also provides for 26 separate serviced apartments, 14 business studios and 10 live/work studios.
A bid for a second 25-key aparthotel at Musgrave Park Industrial Estate is still being considered.
The recommendation to refuse the first project follows concerns from NI Water, which has stated that the waste water pumping station in the area has insufficient capacity to serve the proposed development.
According to a report prepared by city council officials for a meeting of the local authority’s planning committee, the pumping station at nearby Glenmachan Street is currently operating above its design capacity.
According to reports in local media, the Kilmona Group proposed a potential solution to the lack of sewerage infrastructure via email on May 8 2020, and later asked for the application to be removed from the agenda of this week’s planning committee meeting.
But planners said: “This is very late in the day as the issue of a lack of capacity at the Glenmachan Street WWPS was highlighted in the NI Water response dated July 2019 and even earlier by NI Water in a pre-development enquiry response to the applicant in November 2018. It is the view of officers that there is insufficient information to demonstrate that the proposed treatment plant represents either a suitable or feasible solution.”</p
