Algarve trade associations have beefed up their opposition to the new IKEA development between Loulé and Faro, kicked into action by the sounds of the Swedish company already clearing the land.
The trading associations have highlighted irregularities in the planning process, risks to the environment and damage to the regional economy in a notice sent to anyone who wuill listen.
The Association of Trade and Services of the Algarve Region (ACRAL) is leading challenges to the IKEA shopping complex and has sent complaints to 80 public bodies, including the President of the Republic of Portugal, warning of the risks if this project goes ahead, citing damage to the environment and to 'regional economic stability.'
The project includes an IKEA store, a traditional shopping area with 195 shops, a specialised shopping mall with 125 stores, outdoor parking for 1,819 vehicles and underground parking for 847 more.
‘What the IKEA group plans for the Algarve is a commercial project without parallel in the country and without parallel in the region,’ according to the ACRAL statement which adds that there is an ongoing judicial process to determine the legality of the plan which was approved in 2013 by Loulé council that had allowed the use of the green field site for building.
If the court finds that the granting of the land for development was an illegal act the IKEA development may well have to stop.
The Swedes must either be sure of winning in court or have been given the nod that even if they lose, the project can go ahead under some other overarching law, no doubt on payment of a fine.
Various of the Algarve's business organisations have been against the project from the start but the local council saw money and jobs and with almost obsequious haste did everything it could to facilitate the development's approval.
In 2009, the Commission for Coordination and Regional Development of the Algarve considered that the building project was not compatible with the national or local planning programmes and said that such a huge development if built, should lie within existing urban development areas, not on the site selected.
The environmental impact study was keen to hazard guesses dressed up as facts as to the number of direct and indirect jobs that would be created, figures that always seem wildly to overestimate cold reality, but failed to take into account the number of businesses and jobs that would be lost as a result of IKEA’s presence in the Algarve.
The environmental impact assessment was approved with a 'favourable opinion' in July 2014 despite objections to water resources and noise levels.
The Swedish company has pressed ahead with site clearance anyway with the work starting on January 13th.
If the development has later to stop, which is a possibility, the green space already will have been altered by the current groundworks programme and may have to be reinstated.
