The €210 million Quinta da Ombria tourist and golf resort in the unspoiled Loulé countryside forming part of the protected Natura 2000 area between Tôr and Querença now has an opening date of 2018, after a 30 year wait.
The US Viceroy Hotels & Resorts company which is in charge of the project said that it is nearing the end of the paperwork and of the public consultation period for the hotel and the golf club which finishes on 29th September.
The project will be built in a hitherto unspoiled rural landscape and includes a five-star hotel, an 18-hole golf course with club house, restaurants and bars, a spa and 4-star holiday villages "all integrated as a contiguous zone of leisure and wellness inserted in a unique natural landscape" of the Algarve interior on top of the Querença-Silves aquifer which supplies much of the Algarve's undeground water.
The project has had many obstacles, not least from the environmental lobby, and from the European Commission which warned of the negative impacts the development will have on the protected Natura 2000 area.
In November 2014, the US Viceroy Hotels & Resorts company took over the project and made a few design changes to improve the integration of the buildings into the landscape.
According to Viceroy Hotels & Resorts, after completion of the project, the luxury hotel unit will offer travellers "a unique lifetime experience in a prime coastal location in one of the most alluring destinations in Europe."
It is not clear whether the geographically challenged Viceroy Hotels & Resorts company now own the project or whether they are just managing its development and will run it on completion.
In 2006, the construction of the tourist complex was given a ‘final warning’ by Brussels and the council told not to authorise construction "within an area of nature conservation of community importance." Brussels warned that if the planning breach was not addressed the complaint will go to the European Court of Justice but Portugal's various authorites have done nothing including the environment ministry whose remit includes protecting land that already has protected status, unless big money is involved.
The project back then was being promoted by SRV Group and Leart both from Finland, and was the subject of a complaint filed by the League for the Protection of Nature in 2004.
In June 2006, the European Commission stated that Portugal had been sent a "final written warning regarding the urban development and a golf course called Quinta da Ombria within an area of nature conservation of community importance in the Algarve."
Brussels concluded that an environmental impact assessment, "although not exhaustive," found that the project, with a capacity of 1,700 beds and an area of 143 hectares, "would have a significant effect on at least three types of rare habitats covered by an EU directive aimed at "preserving important natural habitats and of wild flora and fauna in the EU."
The project would also have a "significant effect" on the species of flora Lotocephalus Thymus (Portuguese thyme), which according to the directive "deserves priority protection."
The Commission argues that "the Portuguese authorities failed to take adequate measures to protect the ecological interest of the site", making the project "one of many potential threats to the Natura 2000 network under EU protection of natural sites against uncontrolled urban development on the south coast of Portugal."
Meanwhile, the impact assessment pointed out that "hazardous substances in fertilizers used on the golf course could pollute an aquifer (Querença-Silves) considered strategic for the region."
The Commission considers that this would be "a violation of the EU Directive on the protection of groundwater against pollution caused by certain dangerous substances."
Hélder Martins the then General Manager of Quinta da Ombria and former Algarve Regional Tourism Board president said that the project was “environmentally friendly” and that he does not understand the League’s “timing.”
The Environmental Impact Assessment of 29 September 2010 was commissioned by the developer, and “is obviously insufficient and does not remove the imminent impact that the project represents to the environment in the region,” said the League.
Hélder Martins guaranteed that there will not be over usage of water reserves, “We have a protocol with Loulé council and we are going to be supplied with water from the Águas do Algarve dam network, so what those people are saying is plain lies.”
Despite the involvement of Brussels the €200 million Quinta da Ombria project was granted a building licence by Loulé council in July 2012.
Three years later the project has a new front company and looks like it is going ahead in an area that should have been protected by regulation.
Europe has failed so far to take action and the local council has been complicit in passing a project that, by the planning regulations that the public have to follow, are relaxed whenever a developer mentions the words ‘golf’ and ‘hotel.’
The local council is all for the project of course, issuing a press statement that reads that Ombria will "Revitalise the existing rural areas, safeguard the natural and landscape values and combat desertification and the asymmetries between the interior and the coast, these are the main objectives of the Quinta da Ombria project."
