Some years ago, while trying to drum up support against Sliema’s overdevelopment, a very influential person washed his hands, saying: “We are not interested in Sliema, we have written it off as another Buġibba”. Having ruined much of Sliema, are we to now ruin what remains of St Julians?

Having ruined much of Sliema, are we to now ruin what remains of St Julians?- Astrid Vella

Few people would even imagine that there is any surviving unbuilt land in St Julians and, yet, no fewer than five major projects are being planned within a mere 500 metres of each other.

Today, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority will be deciding the fate of the project on the left hand side of Spinola Square, which includes the construction of some 22 apartments and shops between Saddles Pub and Villa Fieres, which is to be restored.

Up the hill on the empty green space between the parish church and the government school, a mega-project is being proposed, including some five floors of underground parking, a supermarket and two floors of office space plus five floors of residences abutting on the Lapsi Street urban conservation area.

A short way further up Mikelanġ Borg Street, a home for the elderly including over 100 bedrooms and a day care centre is being proposed. Across the valley, another project is proposing to clear away the dilapidated Tiguglio site and re-open the water course, exchanging the valley site for a commercial project terraced on the hillside. In addition to all this, the government is to completely remodel Spinola Square itself. These projects include many valid features, however, some further reduce our rare green spaces and violate the policies of the St Julians local plan.

The area has a height limitation of three floors plus penthouse, yet, the block next to Villa Fieres is to rise to seven floors, creating an unacceptable massing.

The villa itself is a scheduled Grade 1 monument, which means that the building and its precincts can only be restored and, yet, some 20 per cent of its garden is to be built upon. If this is allowed, can Mepa refuse others permission to build on protected sites?

This flurry of developments coincides with the launch of the Strategic Plan for Environment and Development (SPED), which is to replace the Structure Plan in updating plans and policies to balance demands for development with socio-economic considerations and the need to protect the environment and heritage.

The SPED predicts that the urban area will become an attractive place for people to live, work, play and interact. It will be clean, pollution free, safe, green, distinct, evoke a sense of openness, its historic cores will become vibrant and their townscapes harmonious – but all this will be a pipedream if we allow more unnecessary buildings to choke areas like Spinola, reducing this already crowded area to a congested tourist trap.

The SPED draft states that until the new subsidiary (local) plans are drawn up, “policies and proposals in approved plans shall not prejudice the implementation of this plan”. If this is to become reality, is this not the perfect moment to step back and assess the requirements of the Spinola area in terms of housing, touristic, commercial, social, transport, heritage and environmental requirements before we go ahead with projects that will undermine the aims of this plan?

The SPED aims to establish the use or redevelopment of existing buildings rather than the consumption of virgin land, even within the development zones. It calls for control on “form, scale, density and type of development within historic cores and the “facilitation of appropriate housing types for historic cores”.

Yet, we are about to add scores more multi-storey residences in an urban conservation area and on virgin land when the Sliema-St Julians conurbation is estimated to have almost 7,000 empty housing units.

If ever there was a time to carry out a cumulative environment impact assessment in order to establish the best options for an area, it is now. The Mepa reform has already had a significant beneficial effect but, in its two-year incubation period, Malta lost countless sites and historic buildings in the race to beat the reform.

Is the SPED really intended to build on the Mepa reform or is it to be yet another expensive study destined to impress but to be left on the shelf, as was the Sustainable Development Strategy?

If Mepa assesses today’s project by the laudable parameters of the SPED policy we will know it is serious about it. Failure to do so will signal that we are well and truly in the run-up of the electoral campaign.

www.faa.org.mt

The author is coordinator of Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar.