A crowdfunding campaign to stop 12-storey apartment plans for Mistra Bay dead in their tracks is just €2,000 shy of its target.
Citizens have raised more than €5,000 in the first week of fundraising against the Gemxija Crown Ltd project, which was approved by the Planning Authority last month.
They initially feared they had just four days to reach their funding target and file an appeal against the project, only to discover they had an added week of breathing room.
“We’re delighted by the support we’ve received from all across the island,” one of the organisers, writer and activist Wayne Flask, told Times of Malta. “Residents from towns threatened by similar monstrosities, such as Pembroke and Xgħajra, have been especially keen”.
Led by activist-residents Priscilla Grima, Karen Tanti and Sandra Copperstone, the organisers have one more week, until Friday March 1, to drum up the €7,350 they need to pay an appeal application fee and cover legal fees to argue the case.
Council remains silent
Unlike activists who crowdfunded to pay for an appeal against the db Group’s City Centre project in St Julian’s last year, Xemxija residents opposed to the Mistra Bay plans must go it alone.
Three local councils – Pembroke, Sliema and St Julian’s – vociferously opposed the City Centre project. The St Paul’s Bay council, by contrast, has remained resolutely silent.
Councillors were due to discuss the project at an urgent meeting scheduled for last week, but not enough members showed up to make up a meeting quorum.
Mayor Anne Fenech has refused to say what she makes of the Mistra Bay project and said it is unfair to accuse the council she leads of inaction.
“This project has been on the cards since 2008, there was plenty of time for previous councils to take a stand,” she told Times of Malta last week.
A decade in the making
The mayor’s 2008 reference harks back to the date when the Mistra Bay project was first presented. Mepa had at the time approved an outline permit for the project, which proposes a series of 12-storey apartment blocks for the site of the former Mistra Village holiday complex.
Five years later, in 2013, planners granted the project a full development permit.
A report by the environment ombudsman subsequently found that Mepa was wrong in both 2008 and 2013 and described plans for the site as “disproportionate”.
Despite planners’ approval, the project faltered as investors failed to raise the necessary capital and subsequently fell out.
It was however resurrected by developer Charles Camilleri, who last July applied to renew the development permit on Gemxija Crown’s behalf before it ran past its five-year expiry date. That application was approved by the Planning Authority last month.
Residents worry that the massive 700-apartment project will overwhelm their seaside locality, choke up already-congested roads and irrevocably transform the idyllic Mistra countryside.
“Maybe the powers that be should think about the people who have donated [to the crowdfunding campaign] and what this absurd planning regime has done to them, how it has affected their livelihoods and damaged their standard of living,” said Mr Flask.
Donations to the crowdfunding appeal can be made via Paypal to mistraprojectappeal@gmail.com, or via Revolut by contacting Priscilla Grima.