The Councillor for Heritage, Rafael Almagro ( PP ) has confirmed today to the media that the auction procedure for municipal land for residential use on the Coast for which the municipality estimated an income of 20 million euros has been abandoned.
Almagro has attributed the result to the uncertainty in the residential tourism construction and tourism sector caused by the health crisis after no the government received no bids at all from property developers.
The councillor said that the procedure was opened before the alarm state. During that period there were several companies in the sector that were interested in the auction. Then the process was frozen due to the pandemic and it was restarted a few weeks ago, but there were no commercial inquiries, nor have there been any bids from companies.
What is the City Council going to do now with what has been one of its main sources of extraordinary income in recent decades? Councillor Almagro explained that you can wait several months to reactivate the same auction with the same plots or consider offering other land on the coast. He also explained that at the moment the process will not be restarted. Councillor Almagro has indicated that the municipality has an important municipal heritage of land classified as urban in Orihuela Costa despite the fact that 30 years have passed since the approval of the General Plan.
The deadline for submitting offers expired on 20th May after the announcement of the City Council to restart the procedure which was interrupted two months ago by the state of alarm to auction municipal heritage of urban land and try to raise up to twenty million euros with the auction of three municipal plots.
The Orihuela City Council had auctioned off three plots. The first one -and one of the most appreciated by the sector- is located on PAU-21, (Colinas Golf Resort), it has an area of 38,539 square meters of land, of which 24,194 square meters are buildable, and It has a starting price for the auction of 14.4 million euros.
The second plot is located in the La Cuerda sector, with an area of 15,861 square meters and 7,726 square meters of roof buildable. This urbanisation is located between La Regia and Castillo de Don Juan, on the second line of the Orihuela coast. The starting price in this case is 4.2 million euros.
The third plot is in the El Garbanzuelo sector (PAU-9), which has 6,951 square meters, with a buildable area of 3,659 square meters and a starting price of 1 million euros. This plot is located to the north of Orihuela Costa, on the second line of the coastal section and next to the Ausur highway, bordering Torrevieja.
The money that would be raised from these sales could not have been used for current expenses, but must be invested again in real estate.