Ambitious plans for a £25 million tourist resort on the former RAF base at Gublusk Bay remain on the table six years after the first planning application was submitted.
Townland Properties Ltd – which has four officers listed on Companies House as Ian Jones, Gary Jones, Brendan Jones and Clarke Deering – is the applicant for the tourist destination resort.
The resort would comprise of a 100 berth floating marina, an 83 luxury bed hotel, 68 self-catering courtyard apartments, 10 self-catering lodges, a single storey RNLI station with slipway, and a reception building with restaurant, site shop, marina facilities and WW2 heritage exhibition.
This week, the Department for Infrastructure published the third addendum to the Environmental Statement which has been submitted by the applicant.
Alastair Keys of Keys Monaghan Architects told  The Impartial Reporter: “The applicant remains keen to progress the application and hopes to get planning permission.”
He added: “It’s quite frustrating when it does take such a length of time.”
Twenty four letters of objection have been lodged with planning service since the project was first mooted in 2011. 
Objectors include the Manor House Country Hotel, which stated that the proposal “seeks to replicate” the Manor, the development would “hinder further investment in existing facilities and … will have a downward effect on the local economy.”
 St. Angelo Airport objected to the plans “on the grounds of safety.”
The applicant’s addendum document states that the development would create over 700 construction jobs during the build and 140 full time equivalent jobs when it becomes operational. 
The document says the site is located within Tourism Opportunity Zone 13 as designated in the Fermanagh Area Plan. 
In reference to St. Angelo’s objection, a letter from SLC Geomatic Solutions, dated November 2016, is attached to the addendum document. 
It states: “In the event that the airport extends the run-way up to 200 metres as was originally suggested, the new approach surface would cross over the hotel and lodge five (the highest lodge) with clearances of 16.63 metres and 13.60 metres respectively … I can still confirm that the hotel development would not infringe any of the protected surfaces for the airport with their current visual approaches.”
Townland Properties Ltd. propose that the appearance of the hotel building will be based on a Catalina sea plane, with a solid, limestone base supporting a light-weight superstructure referencing the warplane’s wing struts and bracing in steel and aluminium.
The document states that Destination Fermanagh 2008 “identifies the need for additional hotel bed spaces at the luxury end of the market. 
It also reveals: 
“In addition to the intention to develop a tourism destination resort around the Lough the site offered a unique opportunity to integrate a cultural heritage product into this given its former use as part of the wider RAF Killadeas Catalina sea plane base during WWII.”