London restaurants Sketch, Zucca and Hedone have two things in common. To the well-heeled foodies, the main common factor is their fabulous Michelin-star food. The second lesser-known common factor is that the opening of these restaurants resulted in an increase of property prices within a 250-metre radius.
This fact was exposed in a study carried out by estate agency Knight Frank between 2003 and 2013, where property price values were studied within a 250-metre radius of some of London’s finest restaurants. This same report links the critical importance of good eateries within areas where a boost in the residential market is needed.
This foodie factor does not only occur in London local regeneration schemes. Antwerp, a city with a population of circa 480,000, also utilises food and retail as an integral part of its regeneration plans. A dame blanche dessert, created by chef Viki Geunes, is a crowd-puller at Museum aan de Stroom, a restaurant with a six-week waiting list.
Other exciting new restaurants include an excellent bistro in a former American Presbyterian church and Het Pomphuis, set in a former dry-dock pumping station. These projects form part of the regeneration plans for Het Eilandje. This previously abandoned dock-island, which witnessed the city’s mass migration to the new world, forms part of Antwerp’s highly successful spatial structure plan for redevelopment and regeneration currently underway.
Lessons in creative reuse can be learnt from the London and Antwerp regeneration stories. However it is not quite so simple as locating a Michelin-star restaurant at the epicentre of a derelict historic part of town.
Regeneration is a complex task. It requires strategic and creative vision, political will, collaboration among stakeholders, innovative ways of rehabilitating historic buildings, and fiscal incentives to catalyse investment.
At the heart of any regeneration strategy, new uses must be found for derelict buildings and brownfield sites. This applies to both the empty buildings of Valletta (official figures are not available. A register of vacant properties in our historical cities is sorely needed and the starting point of any studies) or for example the Victorian potato sheds, at Bridge Wharf, Marsa.
Successful and sustainable regeneration must attract interest and subsequent investment to a depressed area. It must ultimately work with the community while encouraging new people to move back in.
The good news is that empirical data suggests that there has been a marked increase in residential property prices in Valletta. The factors which may have influenced this change include the iconic Renzo Piano City Gate Project. Although we trudge through a construction site and complain about noise, dust and dirt, this project has given Valletta a new lease of life. Last weekend, it was heartening to hear a Danish property investor extol the virtues of the new projects in Valletta: the Renzo Piano Project, Piazza de Valette, St George’s Square and the Barrakka Lift. Incidentally, the latter project, designed and completed by Architecture Project, has just won an award at the Inside World Architecture Festival.
The local plans, now up for review, need to be replaced by localised master plans which promote use of vacant buildings and sites
The second factor which has generated both local and foreign interest is the V.18 programme, which has put Valletta on the cultural map.
Yet is all this sufficient to reverse the declining figures of residential population within our capital city and harbour areas?
Sustainable regeneration of Valletta and the Grand Harbour area requires more vision and strategic thinking. I encourage policy and decision makers to think creatively and channel requests for new build towards the adaptive reuse of our historic buildings and sites. For instance, the Johann Strauss School of Music, Malta’s National Music School, which used to operate from a historical building in Old Bakery Street since 1975, was in 2010 temporarily relocated to North Street, Valletta and the Lifelong Learning Centre in Msida. It is now looking for a new home. Rumours refer to a new building for a National Music School in Qormi.
Now let’s think about adaptive reuse – why not restore the previous building that housed the school and if that building had disadvantages, find a second site within a short distance from the Manoel Theatre to create a national music hub? The Manoel Theatre already creates a little theatre hub with apartments for use by visiting musicians. A music hub in the Manoel Theatre precincts, including rehabilitation of empty apartments in the area, could be the catalyst for regeneration of this entire quartiere of our capital city, with music at the kernel of the scheme. Surely, this would resonate clearly within the overarching aims of Valletta City of Culture, 2018.
In order to bring such ideas into fruition, planners need to relax on the current zoning of uses throughout Valletta and the Grand Harbour. Entire zones are earmarked as residential, commercial or industrial with little reference to the possible overlying of activities. Such uses have coexisted since Roman Times in the form of casa bottega, and yet our local plans create a simplistic two-dimensional separation of such activities. Separating industrial use from residential or commercial does have its virtues, but limiting potential use of abandoned buildings as a result of such zoning is possibly killing potential investment.
Allowing market forces to create new uses for abandoned buildings, in the context of a master plan, is also part of the strategy that should be employed. A recent MEPA application for the establishing of a cafe in the Menqa area was given thumbs down by the directorate as a result of the local plan zoning as light port related uses. Thankfully a more enlightened MEPA Board overturned this short-sighted decision. Hopefully we will see a new cafe and an injection of life into a derelict warehouse along the Menqa sea front. The local plans, now up for review, need to be replaced by localised master plans which promote use of vacant buildings and sites.
Harnessing the vision and technical qualities of private architectural firms to propose a master plan for the Grand Harbour may be the most effective way of getting things off the ground. The Antwerp model of regeneration was the work of a multitude of international private architectural firms and urban specialists. Our planning system needs to be modified to allow specialists in urban renewal to create localised master plans. This is the way it happens in the rest of Europe. A change in the way we do things needs to occur and the current encouragement of public participation may herald such a change.
Whether such local plans are put together by MEPA planners or private firms, they must be rooted in the safeguarding of the historic and natural environment. The ultimate aim of any regeneration master plan for Valletta and the harbour towns must lie in the reuse of existing abandoned historic buildings and brownfield sites.
To catalyse serious investment in such abandoned buildings, the strategists and economists need to do some homework.
An important factor which is limiting rehabilitation in Valletta is constituted by the substantial quantity of historic properties caught up in inheritance disputes. It costs the owners nothing to abandon such buildings. Legal instruments are required to sort out such legal disputes and create some realistic form of ownership. In the light of failure to do so, financial disincentives should be put into place to force a solution and not allow such buildings to rot.
Conversely, financial aid for restoration of properties, such as decreased VAT on restoration works, will also create commercially attractive opportunities – the current policy Investi f’Darek attempts to do this.
The vision must prioritise attracting families back into the city centre. Currently, many young professionals work within the city’s walls. A programme to harness these young professionals to live and work may be one of the first financial incentive schemes to be studied. Of course, in order for residential communities to thrive within the city walls, amenities such as local shops, nurseries, restaurants and other services such as local underground residential parking must also be studied and solutions found.
A climate for regeneration can only exist if there is political will present. Regeneration of our historic cities will not take place if we carry on sacrificing virgin land for development projects. New buildings seem to be the more common solution for commercial, educational or residential needs. The reasons often cited are that new buildings can satisfy the users’ requirements and that such building programmes result in more employment and revenue in the construction sector.
This together with the further exploitation of ODZ land indirectly robs our villages and towns of potential investment. We have already eaten away at vast swathes of countryside between our villages and towns in the entire south of the island. Malta and Gozo are over-developed. There is no two ways about it. We have a declining population with an increasing amount of empty properties.
Now, with figures from the NSO of approximately 39,000 empty properties in Malta and Gozo, regeneration must have a capital R. (In 2011, NSO published a figure of 72,150. However, 46 per cent are second homes, with a figure of 54 per cent vacant all year long.)
English Heritage, in its report on the direct and indirect benefits of the built cultural heritage in the UK, analyses the long-term economic benefits of restoration and regeneration programmes. Allow me to share with you some of the encouraging figures that resulted from this analysis carried out in 2011 (Heritage and Growth, English Heritage, December 9, 2011 “Every £1 invested in the historic environment directly contributes on average an additional £1.60 to the local economy over a 10-year period.”
Malta and Gozo need politicians that have the courage to regenerate our historic urban areas. Instead of feeding the market with virgin land or further intensification of our already densely built harbour areas, we can feed the market with creative catalyst projects that spearhead a new generation of a young hip demographic in our historic cities.
Joanna Spiteri Staines is an architect specialised in restoration and rehabilitation of historic buildings.