In the largest part of Amsterdam, including the center and the popular West district, from Monday it is definitively no longer allowed to build new hotels. That has the municipality of Amsterdam announced. In 2017, a so-called hotel stop was already introduced in some neighborhoods, but this rule turned out to be circumvented through a “gap” in the policy, according to the municipality. The city could not stop the opening of a hotel if the zoning plan of a piece of land allowed for a hotel to be built there: a permit could not be refused legally.
The municipality of Amsterdam is now planning to use so-called ground lease contracts to implement the hotel shutdown after all. These documents record the rights and obligations of the land owner (in this case the municipality of Amsterdam) and the user of the land (the leaseholder). When the owner of a building wants to turn it into a hotel, he has to go to the leasehold counter to adjust the contract. “Because we will no longer cooperate with this from November 1, 2021, the last shortcut to new hotels in places where we do not want them, is now really closed,” writes the municipality of Amsterdam. Nevertheless, about 2,400 hotel rooms will be added in the city “in the coming years,” because these building plans were approved earlier.
Hotels are still allowed to open in some Amsterdam neighborhoods, although the municipality has also significantly reduced the number of locations where owners can still open hotels. The city makes a distinction between so-called ‘no areas’ and ‘no, unless areas’. In the no areas, such as the center and almost all districts within the ring of Amsterdam, the city no longer gives permission for the construction of new hotels. In the no, unless areas, the construction of a hotel is only allowed “under strict conditions”. This applies, for example, to some neighborhoods in Amsterdam-Zuidoost and parts of IJburg to the east.
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