I have some questions on current plans for public spaces in Valletta and Floriana. My first question is this: should the vacated Café Premier site be used by the Bibliotheca or by the Valletta local council?
The upper floor of this beautiful 18th-century building houses some of Malta’s most important historical documents. It holds the priceless, unique archives of the Knights of St John.
The Bibliotheca is in dire need of more space and user facilities if it is to reach the standards of major libraries overseas. A modern reading room would be a great bonus. Today, the available area to study documents is in the main hall upstairs, which is far from comfortable.
This grand hall is a gorgeous venue for lectures, seminars and book launches. Yet when events are held it is necessary to close the entire library to readers.
There is nowhere to hold a coffee break except at the top of the main staircase. It would be so much better if the library also had some meeting rooms, providing the amenities generally expected at international events today.
To find the lavatory at the Bibliotheca, readers must wander through the closed repository of books at the back of the library to a small cubicle halfway down the back staircase, which is inaccessible to anyone with special needs.
The needs of the library are clear enough and I do not need to continue listing its many challenges here. By far the most suitable place, the most obvious place, where the Bibliotheca should expand is within the building itself.
If the Valletta local council has the city’s heritage at heart, one would expect its members to insist that the vacant Café Premier rooms are used for the benefit of the library. I fully agree that the council should have better facilities, yet the Bibliotheca is simply not the place to set up a community day and night shelter or a clinic, which appears to be their plan.
The government’s expenditure of €4.2 million on repossessing the Café Premier for a public purpose has already been the subject of a controversial National Audit Office report. Can’t we at least put some logic into the future use of this important historic site?
This comes across… as knee-jerk decisions to accommodate requests as they come up, depending on who shouts the loudest
How can the government possibly justify using the Bibliotheca building to provide spaces for community facilities, which can obviously be located elsewhere in Valletta?
This comes across as a lack of vision and planning, as knee-jerk decisions to accommodate requests as they come up, depending on who shouts the loudest. Plans to shift the monti further up Merchants Street fall into the same short-sighted pattern.
This leads me to my second question: can someone provide some details about what is happening at Lower Fort St Elmo in Valletta and at the Ospizio site in Floriana?
A few years ago, Fort St Elmo was part of a master plan for the regeneration of the lower end of Valletta. The plans were open for public consultation and engendered considerable debate. Upper Fort St Elmo has since been restored, but many aspects of the overall plan were never tackled, such as the redesign of the road, or plans for the Evans Building area, which was earmarked for a hotel.
Last October, a call for proposals for “a concession for the restoration, rehabilitation, design and operation of Lower Fort St Elmo” was issued, but hardly a squeak has been heard about what is envisaged.
Another ongoing project is the conversion of the Ospizo into a contemporary art exhibition space. One of the main infrastructural projects in the bid for Valletta as Capital of Culture in 2018 was a space for contemporary art exhibitions.
This was originally going to be housed in the Old Power Station near the harbour, but recently the government changed plans and shifted the project to the Ospizio. Works have already started. It will be called the Malta International Contemporary Art Space.
There has been hardly a murmur about this, and little information is available about what is going on. Who is the artistic director and what is his or her vision for the place?
The original plans for the Ospizio in around 2007 were for it to become an artists’ village with a range of facilities. Priorities for the use of EU funding then shifted and the project did not materialise.
I did not notice any public consultation about the latest plans. It has been stated repeatedly that Valletta 2018 is intended to engage the public as ‘stakeholders’. Doesn’t the restoration and use of large public spaces and buildings as cultural venues merit a presentation of ideas to the public?
The Ospizio and Lower Fort St Elmo are both sites of historic importance, with huge potential. Proposals for their development and use should be transparent, and the public should be given some opportunity to put forward suggestions and thoughts.
I look forward to answers to these questions, one day. There’s just one proviso about any replies: one-size-fits-all answers will no longer be accepted.
Please do not repeat, for example, that electricity prices are down or that the economy is still doing fine. Enough of that. Let’s have some information for a change.
petracdingli@gmail.com