Palma’s councillor for urban planning, Neus Truyol, has that the town hall has “nothing to negotiate” with the developers of the retail and leisure centre at Ses Fontanelles in Playa de Palma.
Truyol explained that Unibail Rodamco presented a project for the development in October and once more requested permission to start building work.
The town hall’s response to this was that it was applying the existing legislation, which is the general plan governing commercial centres in Majorca. Under this legislation, there can be a development of no more than 4,000 square metres at Ses Fontanelles. Given this, the town hall would not authorise the Palma Springs project.
“In Palma, we have promised not to build more centres of this type and magnitude. Our commitment is to small retailers and traders.” She added that a Monday meeting of the Playa de Palma monitoring committee expressed its opposition to the project.
This committee comprises representatives from business and residents associations. The 225-million-euro Ses Fontanelles shopping centre at Playa de Palma, Majorca was supposed to be up and running by the end of 2016, bringing nearly 5,000 new jobs to the area.
However the developers were forced to go to court time and again to try to secure authorisation for the building work. They were denied the necessary licences for the project until October last year.
The owner, French real estate group Unibail Rodamco (URW), estimates a 217 million loss of profits if the project does not go ahead.