After 101 years in business, the hotel and restaurant Lanners in Ettelbruck closed its doors for the final time on Sunday 14 July. But rather than a day of celebration, the closure was marked by a distinct tone of sadness.
The main reason for the hotel’s closure is the ongoing development and construction around Ettelbrucks’s train station. Work began in 2017 and is likely to take several more years as it moves through multiple phases of conversion into a multimodal terminal.
The hotel’s owner said it was not just a case of excessive noise and mess, but the construction work had resulted in a distinct lack of parking spaces in the area. There are also plans to build a new youth hostel over 40 metres tall beside the station, although he feels that regardless of the building, a youth hostel would not fit into the neighbourhood.
“Everywhere you look we have problems here, with excessive drinking, fights, the police are called out to the area two or three times a day for these. You’re likely to see eight police vans with officers using batons. Now there are plans to build a youth hostel in a district which is not exactly under control yet.”
Ideally, the proprietor of the hotel would like to tear the building down, keeping the façade, which has protected status, and replace it with apartments. Although the municipal council agreed to these plans initially, the project now seems deadlocked.
“After long discussions the plans were rejected by the new mayor who said the plans would build too deep. But this was after the plans were submitted to them five years ago and had even been checked by their technician, Oberweis I believe. But now they say the plans aren’t compliant. So I’ll shut for good on 14 [July] and we’ll see how it goes. Maybe we’ll get a second awning here in Ettelbruck.”
The municipality says its refusal is due to the fact that the project does not meet building regulations in terms of the planned depth; however, local officials can understand the hotel owner’s dissatisfaction.
“The construction project that was planned was actually a complete development of the plot and according to the building regulations this is only possible at an existing level, from ground level and up”, said the council. “This was not communicated in the right way at the time, which was unfortunate, but we have to stick to the rules here as we do for everyone else.”
The municipality has registered a bid to buy the property, but neither party has agreed a price to date. The station building works have been subjected to delays over the years, which is not a positive for the area, but the mayor highlighted the enormous scale and complexity of the station refurbishment and said it was currently progressing well. As for the area’s security issues, there are plans to install CCTV around the station, but the council is also looking at redeveloping the street to make it more urban friendly and colourful.
