on hold yesterday.

The Development Application Board deferred Elbow Beach's application to expand until its members could visit the site at 60 South Road.

The hotel wants to build 66 additional suites, a conference centre, tennis courts and a parking lot for some 189 cars and 60 motorcycles.

Area residents -- including the Stonington Beach Hotel -- are upset at the plans which also include building a service road and a waste treatment plant in an area designated reserved woodlands.

The plant -- if approved -- will be erected some 30 feet from the boundary separating the two hotels. Some of Stonington's top hotel rooms are situated just 30 feet from that boundary.

Residents of Cataract Hill, Paget, worry that their peaceful access road, that runs off South Road, will become a noisy, congested thruway.

And they are not pleased about the hotel's bid to have some of the undeveloped land, presently designated for tourism use, rezoned to residential.

The proposal has been given the nod of approval from the Ministries of Health, Works and Engineering, Agriculture and Tourism.

And DAB technical officers have said they are "satisfied'' that the changes were "permitted forms of development and reasonable for this site''.

They recommended that the board approve the hotel's applications.

Elbow Beach originally planned to build 29 units, most with swimming pools, on the woodlands area behind Cataract Hill. Those plans have been put on the back burner for now.