There is a high-rise race on who will build the tallest building, reaching heights of more than double the Portomaso Tower. In normal countries such projects would be accompanied by holistic studies of a mass transport system, an overhaul of the waste water system and a proper evaluation of the impacts of any wind caused by the channelling of downdraught. Alas, not in Malta.
The Environment and Planning Review Tribunal will shortly be deciding the multiple appeals on the Townsquare 38-storey Tignè high-rise. Irrespective of the outcome of the decision, the situation is more alarming than thought as evidence was produced of no thorough assessment of the impacts of this project.
The Townsquare permit was granted by a Planning Board, which lacked any representative from the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA), a vote which could have easily been postponed. With only one vote majority for the approval of the application, the narrative went that the vote was held without the ERA chairman Victor Axiak being present.
Axiak had pointed out in a memorandum that assessing the impact and what a particular area may accommodate in terms of high-rise requires holistic and strategic reports which go beyond an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). Needless to add that he was utterly ignored and the decision was instead based on an EIA produced by consultants of the developers.
At street level, increasing ground winds are created below tall buildings. The study of the wind impacts to be produced by the Townsquare project did not take into account the 40-storey high-rise to be built on Fort Cambridge. From the initial consultation, the council had pointed out that this is a requirement of the tall buildings FAR policy which in article 6.6 states that where other tall buildings are likely to follow, the environmental implications of these should be addressed as well.
But as in many other aspects of planning, it is all about cherry-picking from this policy and any environmental requirement conveniently falls by the wayside.
When it came to additional car trips, during the appeal the authorities were asked whether they assessed the figures, as it was found that there were glaring miscalculations in the figures produced by the developer’s consultants. In front of the tribunal, it was said that the figures on which the conclusions are based are not verified by the Transport Planning Unit, what is checked is the final assessment.
As in many other aspects of planning, it is all about cherry-picking from this policy and any environmental requirement conveniently falls by the wayside
When it comes to parking requirements there is a standard which is found in the Development Control Design Policy 2015, which provides a formula to calculate the amount of parking requirement for particular developments. The formula is subdivided into categories of low, medium and high. Sliema is considered a medium area for parking requirements.
The council has on many occasions asked why it is not considered high and was never given a plausible reason. But the issue at hand with respect to Townsquare is that for the benefit of this application, the standard was put down to ‘low’ by the TPU resulting in a lower requirement for parking.
There is a financial gain with such tweaking, as any shortfall would require a contribution to be paid. The council is not interested in contributions, but in ensuring that enough parking is provided for. Such arbitrary shifting of parking standards is a fundamental breach of good administrative behaviour and risks opening the floodgates of claims by other developments for having applied the medium standard in their regard and the low standard for this high-rise.
Now here is where it gets particularly muddled, when the DC15 standard was applied to calculate the onsite parking requirements the Planning Authority’s case officer came up with a figure of 982 required parking spaces for Townsquare. Yet the development only provides for 748 parking spaces. This was justified in testimony provided to the tribunal as having resulted from a totally different model having been applied. This model, the dynamic parking model, is not found in any policy but for the purposes of ensuring that there is no shortfall it was applied as put forward by the consultants of the developer.
When it came to the drainage infrastructure capacity to be impacted by the Tignè tall building developments, the representative from the Water Services Corporation pointed out that there was no report ever done on the holding capacity for this development and other high-rise development in the area. How is it possible that with all the development in Gżira and Sliema there is no report done on the holding capacity of the drainage system?
It is what lies beneath the high-rise projects which is of most concern, the ground winds, the traffic flows and the foul water carrying capacity. Fundamentally unless we have independent verification of studies carried out by developers, there will not be a rigorous assessment of the impacts which will arise and neither will there be resilient mitigation measures imposed.
Creating massive pressures on our infrastructural system and designing upgrades once the problem has arisen simply won’t work.
Paul Radmilli is a Nationalist Party Sliema local councillor.
paul.radmilli@gov.mt