Mepa has approved a permit for an €80 million project to convert the Hal Ferħ  site in Golden Bay into a luxurious tourist complex.

Hotelier Winston J. Zahra, who heads the Island Hotels Group, said his vision was to create a project  with an emphasis "on quality and not quantity".

He said the nature of the new complex would be a first for Malta, centred around a luxury hotel which would be exclusive with a superior touch.

The permit provides for the demolition of the existing Hal Ferh Holiday Centre and the building of the new complex, together with changes to the current road network and a new car park.

"We want it to be a less is more approach with the least impact possible on the environment. We wanted a visionary design. We have been in this industry for 25 years and want to look back in 20 year's time and say we created something good," Mr Zahra said.
 

The group has been working  on the project for two years. It expects the new complex to  create around 300 jobs aside from another 350 during the project development.

The site covers 102,700 square metres - of which 17,000 will be built up.

Mr Zahra said that they had given up around 3,000 square metres of land to upgrade the road network so that none of the surrounding fields would be touched.

Around 12,000 square metres outside the boundary wall will be transformed into an external garden which will screen the hotel. There will also be a 300-car park and there were talks with the scouts to utilize their nearby property to add another 370 car spaces.

"We have created a completely different project, which is environmentally friendly to a level that has not yet been seen," Mr Zahra said.

Architect Peter Zammit explained how the site was originally developed and built as a military camp and barracks. In the 1970s it was converted to a tourism site but closed down a number of years ago.

The Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and the Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee decided that the old military buildings have no historic value. However, they called for a salvaging report to see what could be collected and saved from the buildings and to schedule a chapel and the buildings in the area referred to as the upper camp.

The area is covered by a development brief that calls for an iconic tourism development of low-density with the building take up 20 per cent of the entire site. It also has to be a single business operation.

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