Economy Minister Chris Cardona has announced the government’s plans for redeveloping the White Rocks site into “Malta’s most exclusive development venture”, inviting the private sector to come forward with offers to fill the area with luxury hotels and upmarket apartments.
But while scant details have surfaced so far, the announcement makes one thing absolutely clear: the development will occupy a far larger area than that occupied by the existing dilapidated complex.
The White Rocks complex actually occupies an area of approximately 135,600 square metres – and even this area includes a sizeable proportion of currently undeveloped land, bounded by the existing buildings, the Coast Road and Martin Luther King Street, which leads to the former naval officers’ canteen which is currently being used by the Institute for Tourism Studies.
At the announcement, however, Economy Minister Chris Cardona explained that an area of 449,885 square metres will be offered to the winning bidders. The White Rocks site, therefore, only makes up a little over 30 per cent of the total area.
What these 449,885 square metres actually cover has not been confirmed by the government: a request for the footprint, sent to an Economy Ministry spokesman, has remained unanswered at the time of going to print.
But the approximate area of the footprint can easily be estimated, since there are a number of clear limits to possible development and it is effectively impossible for the footprint not to include the garigue lying between the White Rocks complex and the sea and parts of the nearby agricultural land.
To the south, the Coast Road forms a natural boundary; the land rises sharply upwards at the other end and it is unlikely that a contiguous development would be bisected by a major thoroughfare.
Extending development east of the site is also out of the question: Martin Luther King Street marks the edge of the Pembroke Natura 2000 site, which earned its designation as a Special Area of Conservation due to its rich garigue habitat. In an interview on TVM’s morning programme TVAM last Tuesday, Dr Cardona also confirmed that the Natura 2000 site would be left untouched.
But the site does not cover the entire garigue: curiously, the area just beneath the White Rocks site was left out of the Natura 2000 site boundary, even though it is a natural extension of the same ecosystem.
As things stand, this patch of garigue may end up being lost to development if the project announced last Monday comes to fruition, along with a sizeable portion of the cultivated land that lies above the Bahar ic-Caghaq caravan site. The caravan site itself was the result of illegal development in the area, only for it to be sanctioned after various illegal structures were removed and caravan owners were made to abide by stricter conditions.
The site on offer
Another indication of what the footprint of the project should be may be found in the White Rocks Development Brief, which was issued by the Planning Authority in October 1995.
This brief divides the area into three zones: Zone 1 covers the White Rocks site itself, Zone 2 covers the underlying garigue, all the way down to the sea, and Zone 3 covers a portion of the adjacent fields.
These three zones altogether, however, only cover 369,000 square metres, some eight hectares short of the project area, and part of what was designated as Zone 2 now falls within the Natura 2000 sites.
Since the Natura 2000 site has been declared to be off-limits, the shortfall can only be made up by taking over more agricultural land in the direction of Bahar ic-Caghaq.
Even when the sizeable proportion of undeveloped land in what is officially the White Rocks site, which includes a few fields and even a portion of garigue, is excluded, the announced project could still see development extend into a staggering 31 hectares – close to a third of a square kilometre – of land which was not intended for development.
For comparison’s sake, the city of Senglea, with an area of 20 hectares – or Cominotto with around 25 – would comfortably fit inside the fields and pristine garigue on offer: a whole new town in an area that has never been developed.
So far, there is only one building within Zones 2 and 3: a small, mostly-underground structure that was once the Rocky Beach Club. The development brief did propose that it could be refurbished and re-used as a café/bar, with no extension of its footprint, but ruled out any other development outside the White Rocks site itself.
The garigue bears few other signs of development: a few footpaths, including one linking the beach club to the White Rocks site, and rock-cut steps leading down to a small cove. Various features of potential archaeological and historical importance were also outlined in an archaeological reconnaissance survey, including disused quarries, rock-cut features and cart-tracks.
This, of course, may change dramatically in the next few years. How much, for the time being, remains unclear.
White Rocks’ fall from grace
The complex itself was originally the Bahar ic-Caghaq Officers’ Married Quarters, and is possibly the last colonial structure to be built in Malta: construction only began in 1960, a few years before independence. It was converted into a holiday complex after the departure of British forces in 1979, as were the nearby St Andrew’s barracks, which became the short-lived Medisle Holiday Village.
The White Rocks holiday complex lasted a while longer, but it finally closed down in 1999. The site’s condition subsequently deteriorated quickly, particularly as vandalism was left unchecked. In 2002, then Labour Party leader Alfred Sant called for the resignation of Tourism Minister Michael Refalo over the state into which the site had been allowed to fall, but Dr Refalo’s response was that this was immaterial since the place was set to be demolished anyway.
Two previous attempts to redevelop the site fell through, despite initial agreements with private consortia. The Costa San Andrea consortium, involving a number of local businesses and Spanish hotel chain Sol Meliá, first planned a 500-bed tourist complex, but negotiations with the government fell through after it sought to scale down the complex and include a number of residential apartments instead.
Plans to convert the site into a sports and leisure village – albeit one with 300 residential apartments – was announced by former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in 2010. But subsequent talks between the government and the British consortium set to develop the project led nowhere, and after a change of government last year, the project was scuttled.
The complex’s modernist architecture was actually highly regarded when it was built, earning it two features in the prestigious magazine Architectural Review. But its preservation was never considered – both previous plans would have seen it torn down – and years of neglect may mean that it is far too late to save the crumbling structures.
Minister promises development will ‘do justice to site’
The winning bidder will obtain a 65-year lease on the entire site, but Dr Cardona is insisting that development will be “limited”.
What this means, however, is unclear at this point in time, and the Minister has refused to elaborate. Asked during his TVAM appearance whether development would be limited to certain areas, and whether the project would extend the development footprint, Dr Cardona said that he was not able to provide an answer at this time, but the political direction was that protected areas will be left untouched.
But he immediately went on to stress that the Natura 2000 site will be left untouched, raising doubts as to whether the adjoining garigue would receive the same level of protection.
Dr Cardona also insisted that the developer would be obliged to “landscape” the entire area, a bizarre concept if one is to believe that the garigue and agricultural land is not to be built up. Few environmentalists, if any, would welcome the “landscaping” of pristine areas: replacing garigue with lawns and palm trees is only marginally preferable to replacing it with buildings.
Furthermore, if the government was intent on preserving the unspoilt areas in the first place, there would be no reason to include them in the area that is set to be leased to private developers who will “redevelop” the site.
Dr Cardona did point out that the proposed project’s environmental, ecological and social impact would be a key criterion when it comes to choosing the winning bidder. But if the whole site is theoretically up for development, one would have to trust that the developers’ appreciation for garigue would be greater than the temptation to develop lucrative seafront property in its stead.
Will developers pay for the lease?
When the Sports Village was being proposed, the value of the land on which it was to be built had been estimated to be around €500 million.
But the Sports Village would “only” have occupied 22 hectares of land, slightly less than half of the area presently on offer. This suggests that the value of the site that is set to be leased out to private developers this time around – for a period of 65 years, as Dr Cardona confirmed – hovers around the €1 billion mark.
The Labour Party was strongly critical of the previous government’s plans to “gift” the land to the developers in return for an investment of €200 million, far less than the estimated value of the area.
Whether developers will have to pay a premium for the lease this time round – on top of the investment they will have to make – remains to be seen.
What is certain is that the Labour Party’s plans to redevelop the site started to form before the Sports Village project was officially dropped.
In his TVAM appearance, Dr Cardona confirmed that the party had been approached by developers seeking to redevelop the site even before it was elected to government, and that developers continued to express interest in the site after the general election. The government, he said, immediately launched a number of studies into the site to prepare for the international call for expressions of interest.
By the time he had appeared on television – less than 24 hours after his announcement – more than 100 requests for information were made. Clearly, then, there is no shortage of developers who see the offer of such a vast area as an opportunity not to be missed.