The popular resort of Torremolinos, a favourite with British expats looking for affordable Costa del Sol property, is to build Andalucía's largest shopping and leisure complex. After a plethora of delays thanks to bureaucratic procedures that would try the patient of a saint, the local council is pushing for developers Intu Properties to get started on the project. It's all a far cry from the 1920's, when Torremolinos was still a sleepy fishing village. Now it's the "other" big resort, the one house hunters look to who can't quite afford a holiday home or retirement property in Marbella.
Located some 12 km south of Malaga, Torremolinos is now a town with ca. 43,000 permanent inhabitants. In the summer months, however, this number swells to more than 250,000 thanks to tourism. The beautiful location between Malaga Bay and the Mijas Mountain chain has helped a lot to put Torremolinos firmly on the map for developers and property hunters alike, as have the 300+ days of sunshine a year this part of the Costa del Sol enjoys.
From branded Stores to Ski Slopes - Torremolinos will have it all
The ambitious project represents a major bid to knock Marbella off its lofty perch in the affections of both tourists and potential home buyers. The shopping and leisure centre, the largest such complex in all of Andalucía, will boast a ski slope and giant wave pool that can accommodate surfers, as well as featuring a huge number of domestic and internationally branded retail outlets.
Spanning ca. 195,000 square metres, the site is located between the Palacia de Congresos Conference Centre and the motorway access point, in an area called Molino del Viento. Having stalled for quite some time, the project received new impetus last March, when developers Intu advised London's Stock Market that it had purchased the 30 hectares of land necessary for a sum of 37.5 million euros from British vendors Peel Group, an investment company that had started the project in 2005 and owns shares in Intu.
Developers have only one more bureaucratic Hurdle to overcome
The developers are currently awaiting the approval by Torremolinos Council for the revised Urban Plan, something scheduled for the council's next meeting in November. If approval is granted, works could begin in spring 2016, scheduled for completion in 2018.
Already developers Intu are touting for local businesses to get interested, now that an artist's impression of the revised plans is on hand for them to show what the complex will look like upon completion.
The centre of the complex will be dominated by a large man-made lake, if the plans are approved as they currently stand. Promising that the centre will be something utterly unique within Andalucía, developers Intu have started to sign agreements with branded retailers like iconic toy store Hamleys from Britain, for whom this would be their first flagship store in Spain.
Hamley's legendary London store opened in 1760, and is not just any old toy store, but a major tourist attractions in its own right - and signing the store is certainly a coup for Intu.
The developers are highly experienced in the planning and construction of major shopping and leisure centres, having already built one in Asturias and one in Zaragoza. Torremolinos' project has been budgeted to cost ca. 400 million euros, which includes creating 3,000 new jobs.
According to deputy mayor of Torremolinos, Maribel Tocón, the forwarded plans for the project only lack a few final details, but none of these are connected to the commercial centre. Apparently, the council is looking more closely at the development of the nearby mountain range, which is why another Urban Plan meeting is necessary.
However, Maribel Tocón was optimistic the Junta de Andalucía would approve the project - especially as it had already done so on five previous occasions. This time round, the deputy mayor said, the application will have a document attached to it that the regional government had demanded to see in respect of the water supply.
"We will be presenting an Urban Plan with all the modifications and corrections they wanted," she confirmed.