A development application for the expansion of Floriana’s multistorey car park and the construction of a public roof garden has been submitted.
The application was filed after a lengthy screening process stretching back to 2012. The planning authority has bound itself to give a final decision by May of next year.
MCP Company Limited, which owns the existing facility, wants to build in the middle core of the car park to increase capacity by about one-third – up to 1,550 spaces.
The plan involves landscaping the car park’s roof, which will once again become a recreational open space, as it was up to 1991, when the garden next to the Commonwealth Air Forces Memorial had to make way for the underground facility. The car park was inaugurated in February 1995.
The application, submitted on May 29, includes a kiosk at roof level, administration offices and shops in the basement. A pedestrian walkway linking the landscaped roof level to the public garden is also being proposed.
In October 2012, Parliament approved a resolution through which the government extended the 50-year emphyteusis granted in 1991 by a further 65 years.
The extension agreement, which was tabled in Parliament on October 8, 2012, bound the developer to invest at least €5 million in the project, including the cost of the additional parking spaces. It also obliged MCP to complete the project within four years from the issuance of the development permit.
As from 2041, the annual ground rent is set to rise from €23,000 to €200,000, with a further 10 per cent upward revision every 10 years.
The agreement also specified that commercial activity allowed within the car park should be limited to sports and leisure facilities, valet parking services and motor vehicle-related operations.
Panel beating, spray painting and mechanical services were explicitly prohibited.
The government bound itself to purchase 100 spaces at a cost of €3.2 million to make available parking spaces in Valletta that are reserved for official vehicles.
keith.micallef@timesofmalta.com