Eden’s ‘golden bridge’ to welcome visitors to St George’s Bay

The Eden Leisure Group has presented visual impressions of a ‘golden’ pedestrian bridge they are proposing high above the main road, leading to St George’s Bay, that will serve to link two hotels owned by the group. 

The bridge will be accessed by reinforced concrete stairs to link the 10th storey pool area at the Intercontintental Hotel, to the new Voco Hotel which is under construction. The inscription ‘Welcome to Saint George’s Bay’ will be written on glass railings which illuminated by LED lights.

The bridge will cement the insistence of the Decesare family, owners of the Eden Leisure Group, to brand the destination as St George’s Bay, as opposed to Paceville, the name of the entertainment area located right behind its premises.

The 13-storey, 338-bed Voco Hotel is being built above the existing Eden Superbowl, which will be retained. The four-star hotel is part a mixed development that includes 4,500 square metres of office space ane over 2,100sq.m of retail areas.

The Voco project benefitted from a policy that grants hotels an extra two floors over and above the local plan’s height limits, despite the two floors now being used for offices and not just for tourist accommodation.

Initially, Planning Authority officials expressed doubts on whether the policy can be applied due to the considerable amount of office space included in the project.

The development was eventually approved after the developers declared that the offices will be used for the management operations of three hotels – the InterContinental Malta, the Holiday Inn Express and the new hotel.