Bach Gruppen’s new hotel in Rødbyhavn did not exactly receive a warm welcome from the residents of Rødbyhavn when it was presented at a citizens’ meeting on Wednesday evening.
Following the Planning Appeals Board’s decision last year, Lolland Municipality has drawn up a new local plan and a new municipal plan supplement after the decision last year that the municipality’s dispensation for construction was not legal. These allow the Bach Group to build the 41-metre-high hotel at the far end of Vestre Kaj in Rødbyhavn.
The hotel will thus be the closest neighbour to the new foreland, which will soon be laid out south of the city.
Will companies incur additional costs?
There were many concerns, especially from the nearest neighbours – the companies Rødbyhavn Bådeværft and Bredgaard Boats. It emerged at the meeting that, among other things, Bredgaard Boats must have built a somewhat taller chimney, as their emission of styrene-containing smoke would otherwise hit the hotel’s upper floors.
– Is it really true that businesses in the area get extra costs just because you want a new building? it sounded from a questioner in the hall.
Infrastructure can be improved
Neighbours from Rødbyhavn’s residential areas were quite dissatisfied with the heavy traffic that various construction projects have already brought – especially in Havnegade. Here, the municipality’s emissary admitted that infrastructure around construction projects, in general, is something that can be improved.
Ugly and spoils the entry
Others in the room were worried that the construction would be ugly and would spoil the entrance to Rødbyhavn and the view from the new resorts on the foreland.
– Bach Gruppen has to build something that doesn’t look like everything else on Fehmarn’s south coast… but something that is much, much nicer, read one comment.
Will develop the local area
– I can’t imagine the Bach Group thinking: “How can we come up with something that will be the very worst that the people of Lolland can imagine?” and then pop it up, said the chairman of the Climate, Technology and Environment Committee in Lolland Municipality Tine Vinther Clausen (V).
– It is fantastic that someone will come who will develop our local area and bring life to the shop again. This is what we need, she argued.
Wants to start next year
The Bach Group had sent several executive board members from the head office in Viborg – with Chief Executive Officer Lene Christensen at the helm. They are impatient to get started so that the Lolland shortage of accommodation capacity can be exploited.
But when the local plan and the municipal plan supplement are in place, Bach Gruppen must first have a building permit and then make agreements with the various parties in the area.
– But we want to start building as soon as possible. We would very much like to start the digging queues next year, said the director of Bach Gruppen’s BGE A/S Benjamin Galacho.
The plans for the new hotel building are in public hearing until 6 December.
