Council describes plan for 11-storey hotel at Galway Docks as “overbearing”
From this week's Galway City Tribune - The City Council’s Planning Department has described a proposal for an eleven-storey hotel – towering 38 metres over Galway Docks – as “excessive” and warned it would have an “overbearing” impact on Long Walk and Forthill Cemetery.
Planners have told the development company behind the plans for the 186-bedroom hotel that the former Bord na Mona coal yard at the Docks does not have the capacity to cater for a development of the “scale, height, massing and intensity proposed”.
They have been told to scale back the plans and make other changes.
In September, Summix BNM Developments lodged a planning application with the Council for a three-storey to eleven-storey hotel with a rooftop bar and function area on the 0.55-acre site at the corner of Lough Atalia Road and Bóthar na Long, adjacent to the new Bonham Quay development. The plans also include a restaurant, coffee bar and terraces.
According to the application, demand for hotel rooms in Galway will exceed “pre-Covid” levels by 2023.
The Council said that with a height of 38m and length of 70m-90m facing Bóthar na Long and Forthill Cemetery, the building “is not considered to assimilate well; lacks integration with the existing urban form; fails to achieve the visions and aspirations of the Galway City Development Plan … detracting from the character and setting of the area”.
This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read the rest of the story, see this week's Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.