The Planning Authority board has approved an application by the university for the building of a campus extension which would include an underground car park.

The board also approved an application for the development of a 'shopping village' between Attard and Mosta.

The University development will accommodate offices for academic, technical staff and post graduate research staff, research and teaching laboratory spaces, a design studio and workshop spaces, and a range of lecture facilities. The proposal also includes the construction of an exhibition hall, a conference facility, experimental roof gardens, extensive landscaped areas,  and an underground car park for 290 cars to compensate for the loss of surface car-parking and to reduce on-street parking on the ring-road.

The site of the development is a plot of agricultural land South-west of the University campus, formed over disused quarries having a site area of approximately 12,850 sqm. 

The ancillary farm huts found on the site are currently used by the University of Malta to store machinery. Another part of the site, which lies within the development boundary for University expansion, is currently being used up as a car park. Also lying within this asphalted area of the site, is the farmhouse building, with its recent extension, which currently houses the Institute of Earth Systems.

The University Chapel and a showroom border the site to the east and the existing university campus flanks the entire north boundary of the site. The university car park lies to the west of the site and the Birkirkara By-pass marks the site’s southern edge.

MOSTA SUPERMARKET

The board also approved an application for the conversion of the grounds of the Francesco Fenech plant near Mosta into a supermarket and other outlets constituting a shopping village.

Pama shopping village, as the project is called, will feature a  3,000 sq metre supermarket, a park for several hundred cars, warehouses, a carwash and a chapel.

The board insisted that the car park should be open on all days free of charge and there should be more landscaping.

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