Residents consider legal steps

Residents of The Gardens, St Julians, and areas surrounding the Pender Place and Mercury House development are "disappointed and disgusted" at the way the Malta Environment and Planning Authority board "rode roughshod" over their objections to what they termed a mammoth project last week.

Faced with the authority's "appalling" decision to give the green light to the Pender Gardens project, the residents are actively considering the next administrative and legal steps to "have their legitimate objections seriously considered".

The development would be squeezing almost 400 residences and parking facilities for over 1,000 cars into a stretch of land the size of two football pitches in what has always been strictly a villa area under previous planning schemes, the preservation action group has complained.

The outline application, approved by Mepa last week, authorises the building of blocks ranging from seven to 22 storeys that will block out the sun for long parts of the day, the action group pointed out.

The four-level underground car park, it said, was far beyond the needs of the residential and commercial development.

"Although some modifications were made, which marginally cushioned the impact of the development, mostly to accommodate the developers themselves, the residents' objections to the sheer density of the project and its deleterious effect on health and quality of life were paid short shrift by the board members, who took only a few minutes to deliberate after a four-hour presentation.

"The charade at the meeting got off to a bad start when almost half the residents, who turned up at Mepa's invitation, were refused entry on the grounds that the room was full.

"Half the seats had already been occupied by the developers, their consultants and lawyers," the action group said in its statement.

Objections to the "exaggerated" height of the blocks and towers, the density of the project, the control of entry to the site at night and, above all, the menace of air pollution were not decided upon or else "conveniently swept under the carpet to be discussed at a later stage - probably when the project would have already gotten under way and would be too late to stop.

"It was obvious to all residents that the approval of the outline development plan was a foregone conclusion - as persons close to the developers had bragged all along," the group claimed.

"Given that the development brief was drafted by Mepa's own experts, it was hard to expect that its board would stray far from the proposals of its employees."

The action group has questioned how Mepa could be impartial when the original brief was conceived by its own officials, describing the case as a "conflict of interest".