The Labour Party leadership met interested parties yesterday to explain its vision for the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett outlined in plans published yesterday week.
One hopes that among its interlocutors yesterday there were also the bus drivers, who loudly complained last week they had not been consulted and were very much against the very idea of the City Gate terminus being sited underground; the Valletta local council which also complained it had not been consulted, and the financial services people who seem to have said they were not consulted either about the concept of turning the Opera House into a financial services centre, described by one of them as “yet another office block”.
After a whole summer spent in meetings with local councils and assorted bodies such as regatta clubs, Labour came out last week with what it said were 100 projects. Actually, people who added them up said they are 63 projects, and some are duplications of each other, such as twice mentioning doing something to Haywharf.
Of course, Labour’s 100 (or 63) projects were meant to outshine the government’s 20 projects for Grand Harbour. The government’s vision for Marsamxett Harbour will be published this week and, from a report in The Times, it is clear it will include berthing cruise liners and the building of a breakwater at Tigne.
By and large, the two plans – the government’s and Labour’s – keep the same mix between cruise liners, maritime and yacht services. But then Labour added to the congestion in Grand Harbour with the relocation of Gozo Channel as well as the AFM patrol boats without saying where these two activities will be located and what will be moved to make space for them.
In a more general way, Labour’s plans come without the allocation of space for the various activities in Grand Harbour, which is hardly a serious way of doing things when one considers the immense restriction of space in the harbour.
Labour also suggests turning over the Deep Water Quay to cruise liners when MMA already has EU funding to carry out badly needed structural works to help Malta’s export effort.
Other than that, both the government’s and Labour’s plans include using a quay at Senglea and at Barriera Wharf for cruise liners.
The government had proposed expanding the Maritime Institute to the waterfront while Labour proposed moving it to the Sea Malta building, which was left unaddressed in the government’s plans.
A rather more serious objection regards the Labour proposals for St Elmo: Labour proposes its restoration by the government and turning it into a military barracks.
The government’s plans for St Elmo will be out this week with the Marsamxett plan. Basically, the government proposes turning the badly neglected no-go area where, reportedly, drugs are rife and a tiger is kept, and the place where Midnight Express was shot, into a cruise liner terminal and using the finances it derives from this activity to pay for the restoration of the whole fort.
As for Upper St Elmo, the government proposes removing the Police Academy, using the restored building for cultural activities both indoors, and outdoors. One important principle: the whole St Elmo must be kept open and used by the public at all time.
One can possibly say the two main parties are each to blame for the sorry state of the entrance to the city: PN with its garish City Gate and fascist architectural style, and Labour with the apartment blocks it built there.
Quite sensibly, from the political point of view, the government has stayed away from suggesting doing anything to City Gate, while Labour has gone the whole hog: from building the Opera House site and turning it into a financial services centre to turning City Gate into a garden and relocating the terminus underground. The comments over the past days have shown how well nigh impossible it is to suggest anything for City Gate and the opera house without the rest of the country strongly disagreeing.
Labour then further suggested connecting Marsamxett to Grand Harbour by sea. This could either mean a rehash of Connections 2, digging a tunnel underneath the city with an intermediate stage just under Palace Square; or digging a canal through the ditch joining the two harbours by sea that way.
Connections 2 was abandoned because it will be a nightmare: a modern equivalent of the phantom’s lair in The Phantom of the Opera. The boats would sail underneath six storeys of rock and buildings, in pitch darkness, just like in a Disneyland House of Horrors.
As for the ditch project, this is something the Knights dreamt of doing but never got round to it. It may sound like a romantic idea: floating on a bateau mouche from one harbour to the other.
But concretely it will mean excavating a stretch 1500m long, 25m high and let’s say five metres wide. That’s the equivalent of 187,500 cubic metres of rock, with all the problems of costing the digging process, its relocation somewhere else and all this so that a small number of boats can pass from one harbour to the next, from Sliema to Birgu. However, one must also remember that the Captain Morgan boat from the Ferries to Marsamxett does and will not operate for around 100 days of the year due to rough seas, unless there is a breakwater at Tigne.
All the main elements of the government’s plans are in the Labour report. But while the plans in the government report are detailed, Labour just paints an image in words. Labour had harshly criticised the government for coming up with a bundle of artists’ impressions and it is doing exactly the same, not just in images but also in words.
Whoever wins the election: Valletta is due to be the cultural capital of Europe in 2016. Let us not repeat the shameful scenes of 1998 when the cultural capital of Europe spent half the time of its reign with its main street dug up (see other story on this page).
2015 is the year when the government’s projects for the regeneration of Grand Harbour are completed. 2016 is the year when Valletta celebrates the 450th anniversary of its founding. That will also be around the time when Malta will have the presidency of the European Union.