The Pebbles Boutique Aparthotel in Sliema will temporarily close as a major redevelopment project gets underway, with demolition and excavation works slated to commence from 10th January 2024.

Situated atop the popular TexMex Bar & Grill outlet close to the border with Gżira, Sea Pebbles Boutique Hotel was envisioned to add another 150 rooms to the existing 52, bringing the total number to 202 rooms.

The extension would have consolidated Sea Pebbles Ltd’s holdings in the area, which include the neighbouring mixed use corner building overlying MedAsia Fusion Lounge (which also forms part of Sea Pebbles Group), and a seven-storey block containing 17 guest rooms on Saint Agatha Street, which is at the back of the block in question.

Construction was planned to take place during 2021 and 2022, with the company projecting the redeveloped hotel to be fully operational from 2024, as per the prospectus for a bond issue in 2019.

That plan was however put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June 2023, the group’s financing arm, SP Finance plc, announced that the development would be put off to consider possible alternatives, but a clarification issued shortly after made it clear that this was not referring to a possible alternative use, but rather a “reassessment of the originally planned proportion between rooms, apartments and penthouses which comprised 303 standard rooms, four two-bedrooms apartments and a four-bedroom penthouse, in order for it to better meet the foreseen tourism market demands for the forthcoming years.”

It is not clear how and when the difference between the originally quoted number of rooms and the latest figures provided came about.

Planning Authority records show that the demolition phase (PA/06894/20) has been approved, while another application (PA/08752/21), to extend the overlying floors of MedAsia to 209 rooms and five apartments, remains at screening stage.

That application would change the layout from that approved in PA/01137/17, which included a change of use of residential aparmtents into a 64-room hotel, extending over the airspace of the adjacent Pebbles Hotel.

With the final development seemingly yet to be approved, the precise layout and total number of rooms is apparently still under consideration.

In any case, since the project was split into phases and the demolition and excavation phase given the go-ahead, Sea Pebbles as we know it will come to an end next month.