Retail and apartments to replace former Spiddal hotel
This article first appeared on Galway Bay FM
Final approval has been given for plans to demolish a former hotel in Spiddal and replace it with retail units and apartments.
Some of the units on the site of the former Ceol na Mara Hotel will be for short-term lets.
Developer Solus Holdings ULC secured permission from county planners earlier this year.
The project would see the hotel fronting onto the R336 cleared to make way for a mixed use development.
Facing the sea, would be retail shops, with 8 commercial short-term lets overhead.
And towards the back, would be 10 residential apartments.
After county planners granted approval, a local community group took an appeal to An Coimisiún Pleanála.
It noted a chronic lack of housing in the Gaeltacht, and the loss of native Irish speakers as a result - and said all the units should be either for sale, or rental.
The higher planning body has now ruled the project can go ahead - but it has ordered that 80 percent of the residential apartments be reserved for Irish speakers.