Inca, Mallorca

Inca town hall has ruled out conversions in central commercial areas. | Juanjo Roig

Andrew EdePalma27/10/2023 20:58
TW
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One of the Balearic government's emergency housing measures is to facilitate the conversion of commercial premises into residential accommodation. These are premises, it is assumed, that are on the ground floor of buildings. Go pretty much anywhere in Mallorca, and you will find such premises, so many of them that I well recall this having been the subject of argument years ago. New or redeveloped buildings were appearing, and they all had commercial units on the ground floor. This was the planning regulation, irrespective of the municipality. But why, it was argued, were there all these premises? Why were they needed? Might it not have been better to have created more places to live in?

It depends where these premises are. In some neighbourhoods, shops and other services act as a lifeblood for the local community. They are to be cherished precisely because they are alternatives to, for example, multiple retailers like supermarkets and out-of-town malls. But then there are the places where they can appear to serve far less of a function. They aren't necessary.

The government's housing decree allows town halls to make decisions regarding these conversions. In theory, they could be rejected totally. It would, as I say, depend on where they are. And so the greatest likelihood exists, it is perhaps reasonable to believe, in the larger municipalities, those with numerous neighbourhoods or with greater urban sprawl than others.

Inca is one of these larger municipalities. The town hall has said that, in principle, conversion is likely to only be permitted in the 'eixample', that area of the town that was for expansion purposes. In other words, central parts of Inca will not be considered. The town hall wishes to retain the commercial fabric represented by the likes of the Gran Via Colom.

That's perfectly understandable and not only for preserving the commercial fabric. The provisions of the decree - conversion of commercial premises and obsolete hotels and adding extra storeys - all have the same objective, which is to create what the government calls limited-price housing. Affordable housing, either for sale or for rent, is the aim. Commercial areas of town centres would simply prove to be too expensive.

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A more extreme example than Inca is in Palma. There is no way that premises on Avda. Jaume III, for instance, could possibly become affordable housing. Palma town hall has already established this. Like Inca, there will be a system of zoning to determine those areas which might be most suitable.

But how many potential conversions of this type might there be? Palma's housing councillor, Oscar Fidalgo, noted recently that there were around 850 commercial premises in Palma that were listed for sale on the Idealista website. He has extrapolated from this number in arriving at an estimate of 1,500 that could be converted, which might be on the high side, as properties for sale on websites are often duplicated.

But if he's right, these would clearly go some way towards creating badly needed affordable housing. However, it isn't necessarily as simple as it might sound. For starters, and as Inca town hall has noted, there are existing municipal urban plans. The mayor, Virgilio Moreno, says that there are some doubts about the application of the government's decree. Many questions have been raised since it was approved at the start of October, and as yet there hasn't been a single project proposal.

Give it time. Not even a month has passed. True, but how well will municipal mechanisms work? In a smaller municipality, Pollensa, the 2024 budget contemplates additional spending on taking on two municipal architects just to deal with the backlog of licence applications. In Palma, even though Fidalgo said on Tuesday that the zoning will be completed in three months, it has been the case that the planning department has struggled to keep up with all the requests for permissions. This department, and it will be the case in other municipalities with far fewer resources than Palma, could find itself with far greater workloads in the new year, always assuming that the potential conversions have been adjusted to general municipal plans.

None of this might matter were it not for the fact that the government's decree comes with a deadline - projects have to be presented within two years of the decree's publication and executed within three years. The clock is already ticking for planning departments not exactly renowned for moving rapidly.

Will this plan for conversion end up meaning very little? One hopes not. It may only provide a drop in the ocean for what is needed for affordable housing, but it is something. Pity they hadn't thought like this all those years ago when they were creating unnecessary commercial units.