Porto Skadar Lake Project, worth €160 million, is being built on the basis of illegally issued construction permit, thus, the conditions for it to be deleted from the spatial plan have been obtained, according to the documentation in the possession of the MANS Investigative Centre. On Friday, the members of the Parliament of Montenegro will discuss the Special Purpose Spatial Plan for the National Park Skadar Lake.
At the end of 2014, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (MSDT), headed then by Branimir Gvozdenović, issued urban planning and technical conditions (UPTC) to the “Montenegro Resort Company” (MRC) for the project of eco-tourist settlement “Porto Skadar Lake”. On the basis of these conditions, the company developed a conceptual design that envisages the construction of a hotel with 50 apartments, 30 villas, a marina, a port and other accompanying facilities.
However, UPTC issued by the Ministry also contains a letter from Cetinje Electric Power Distribution which states that conditions in terms of the electricity plan are “not acceptable” for them because they are not in accordance with the draft State Location Study (SLS) “Mihailovići” within which the controversial tourist complex is being built. In the document itself, Cetinje Electricity Distribution did not explain what exactly was not in accordance with the planning document.
Despite this stance by the Cetinje Electric Power Company, at the end of March 2015, MSDT issued a construction permit for the disputed tourist complex.
In Article 62, the Law on Spatial Planning and Construction of Structures stipulates that the urban and technical conditions, among other things, must include conditions for connecting of the planned facilities to the electricity network. The competence to determine whether the UPTC are issued in accordance with the planning document lies with the urban inspection which in this case should ban their use and propose to the Ministry a revocation of the construction permit.
In the existing SLS “Mihailovići” based on which Porto Skadar Lake is being built, it is stated that the investor has a period of three years to obtain a construction permit, that is, until October last year. Therefore, if the competent authorities revoke the existing construction permit because it was issued contrary to the law, the project could be deleted from the plan, given that the time-limit for the investor to obtain a new license expired.
Author: Lazar Grdinić
MANS Investigative Centre
Over 35.000 m2 designed in seven days
In addition to the illegal issuance of the construction permit, the data show that the investor was efficient in the production of technical documentation. Namely, in just seven days after the Ministry issued the controversial urban planning and technical conditions, the investor managed to create a conceptual design for a hotel of 50 apartments, 30 villas, a spa centre and a restaurant.
At the same time, during these seven days, the investor managed to carry out the review as well, i.e. to check that the project of over 35 thousand square meters of tourist and accompanying facilities is in line with the planning documentation.
It was not possible to complete such a large-scale design project in a very short period of time, unless the Ministry’s requirements had already been known to the investor even before it received urban planning and technical conditions.
