The Paceville master plan tried to create a new-look location, but planners may have overlooked the reality on the ground, as Kurt Sansone found out.

Minecraft is a digital game with uninspiring graphics. But it allows the gamer’s imagination to run wild by using blocks to create awe-inspiring worlds.

And if a building stands in the way of a brilliant idea, it can be knocked down at will.

It’s a game that might well have been the inspiration for British consultancy firm Mott McDonald when it drew up the Paceville master plan.

The preferred Option 3, put forward as the best solution for redesigning the Paceville and St George’s Bay area, seems to have failed to take into account what exists today.

In a push to create new open spaces and streets – called view corridors – the planners just ploughed across existing buildings, and in typical Minecraft fashion, decreed their destruction.

The result is a more organised, tidy Paceville that has left many residents and business and land owners fuming – and a few mega developers rubbing their hands.

The creation of a large main plaza by expanding the existing square at the top of Paceville – where Plush and Burger King now stand – is possibly the single most glaring example of Minecraft planning. An entire triangle of business outlets and apartments is earmarked for demolition, including The Axis, a €5 million shopping mall and dining location that opened its doors just five years ago.

A: The eCabs office block and adjacent sushi bar will have to make way for an opening to cater for a public square and improved entry junction into the area.

B: The Axis

C: Night clubs

D: Plush

E: Black Bull

B-C-D-E This triangle that currently forms part of the St George’s Park land hosts a number of pubs, including the iconic Plush, Black Bull Pub and The Axis shopping mall and food court. These businesses and the overlying apartments will have to be pulled down for what would become a central public plaza.

Younger readers will identify with Plush, AXM and the adjacent shisha terrace. They will all vanish, as will the Black Bull Pub, in the new vision of Paceville.

And the whole of St George’s Park, the largest land area owned by a single-family company and currently hosting a mixture of offices, hotels and residences, seems to have got the short straw.

F: Aragon Business Centre, a very recent modern glass-clad office block part of the St George’s Park land, will have to be sliced through the middle to create a new viewpoint from Triq Ball all the way to St George’s Bay.

In what appears to be a desktop line-drawing exercise, planners proposed four view corridors criss-crossing the whole of St George’s Park, splitting it up into seven smaller blocks.

The view corridor that will join Triq Ball with the coast road at St George’s Bay is possibly the most glaring example of disregard for what already exists.

Bang in the middle of this view corridor is the Aragon Business Centre, a glass-clad, modern, multimillion-euro office block that is only a handful of years old.

This building, housing banking institutions and top-notch office space will have to be partially obliterated, as will the residential apartment blocks at its backside. Even a Minecraft gamer would have had some remorse destroying a modern building like that.

During the parliamentary committee meeting last week, it emerged that Mott McDonald consulted no one while drawing up the master plan. The exercise undertaken by The Sunday Times of Malta shows they may not have even walked through Paceville’s streets.

G: La Valette Resort, also part of the St George’s Park land, will also have to be sliced through the middle to create a view point from Triq Paceville to the Dragonara ring road.

The apartment blocks forming part of the St George’s Park complex overlooking St George’s Bay, may have the aesthetic of another era but are not run down. Yet some of these blocks that house families who own their own flats will have to make way for view corridors.

The same fate awaits the rooftop bar at Hugo’s Terrace at St George’s Bay, and the chauffer-driven-car company Ecabs will have to find a new place for its headquarters.

All this expropriation of mostly private land and buildings to make way for public squares and streets was valued at a mere €151 million by Mott McDonald.

Taxpayers have forked out €300,000 for a master plan the government now says will be reviewed. It would have turned out cheaper had the job been assigned to a Minecraft gamer.

H: Residential apartment blocks at St George’s Park will have to be pulled down to make way for the two view points across the land.

I: Low-lying residences on St George’s Bay will have to make way for the third viewpoint that will cross the St George’s Park complex.

J: The St George’s Park Hotel will be diced into four parcels to make way for two view lines earmarked in the master plan.

K: The rooftop bar at Hugo’s Terrace will have to disappear, leaving only clubs and outlets at ground level, to make way for a public open space above Triq Santu Wistin.