In January 2024, Manacor Town Hall announced that it would be purchasing the Topaz Apartments in Calas de Mallorca and would then demolish the building as part of a plan to revitalise the resort.
The apartments, fifty of them, were built in the mid-1990s. There was a swimming pool, a bar, and a pub, making it a tourist attraction for Calas de Mallorca. Over the years, the building was abandoned. An eyesore, the apartments have been a magnet for squatters and drug dealers.
Residents asked the town hall to find a solution, and the town hall thought one had been found. An EU Next Generation Funds for projects in saturated and mature tourist areas was applied for. Via the regional tourism ministry, the town hall was awarded €4.8 million. This will now have to be repaid, with interest, because the project is not being carried out.
Manacor's mayor, Miquel Oliver, says bureaucratic and legal obstacles with one of the three owners are the reason. The 50 apartments are owned by three investment funds, one of which has a debt of over three million euros with creditors and is also awaiting a court ruling. "The town hall must purchase the building free of any encumbrances. We tried to make things very clear to the three investment funds that own the property and wanted to sell. But it wasn't possible.
"We never imagined that the situation could become so complicated. We discovered that each apartment has a different cadastral reference, so they were being marketed separately." While the investment fund that owns 60% of the Topaz assets agreed to sell and a second fund was also willing to sell, the third owner "is the one who holds all of Topaz's debt, more than three million euros, in addition to an ongoing legal claim". It is this which makes the town hall purchase impossible.