The usual suspects seem content that the buildings at Dock No. 1 will now house some kind of college – please, let’s stop insulting everyone’s intelligence by calling it a university – and that some use will be made of them at last. Their focus has been on the ‘fact’ that those buildings will be restored and brought out of their neglected state. But what sort of tunnel-vision is that? This is not just about the restoration and use of the buildings. Mainly, it is about what those buildings will be restored and used for.
Over the last few years, an inordinate effort has been made by the state authorities and by private investors to regenerate the Dockyard Creek area as that recherché mix of upmarket with rough-round-the-edges local colour. There is now mooring for yachts, Malta’s only super-yacht marina which hosts some of the world’s most beautiful boats from time to time, a couple of excellent restaurants and others which are not so good but are trying hard, the National Maritime Museum, old houses which have been converted at great trouble and expense into smart boutique hotels, and a booming market in decrepit houses converted into homes for the sort of people who might otherwise have been looking in Sliema or Madliena.
Exactly how does dumping a few thousand – or even a few hundred – students right there chime with all this? It doesn’t. It is in complete and utter conflict with it, and represents an urban-regeneration planning nightmare. The last thing you want around a super-yacht marina is a student colony. Ditto with boutique hotels targeting ‘the discerning traveller’, who is prepared to pay that little bit extra to stay in a converted palace in the historic core of Grand Harbour… but not with thousands of students milling around outside. The presence of those thousands of students will do absolutely nothing to help property prices in the area, either. People who are able to pay high prices for a house don’t want to live surrounded by students.
It is more than obvious that the buildings at Dock No. 1 should be used for a purpose that dovetails nicely with what is going on already in Dockyard Creek, the direction it is meant to be taking. That purpose would most definitely not be a college for random students – whether they are from the Middle East or Europe. It should be a purpose that brings people, visitors and Maltese alike, in and not locks them out as this supposed college will, by its very nature, do. In the more civilised parts of Europe, buildings like those, in a location like that, would be used for artisans’ ateliers, vintage and antiques stalls, beautifully (and simply) decorated cafes and whole-foods restaurants, and exhibition space. That, and not a college set up and fully owned by a Jordanian building contractor, is exactly the sort of thing that would play well.
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I was astonished to see just how many people did not fully understand that ‘American university’ does not mean a university owned by Americans where the students will be American, but an American-style curriculum and teaching methods. The suggestion, made in a social impact assessment, that a mosque be built at the Zonqor Point campus, seems to have galvanised minds in this respect. The penny has dropped, and not before time, that this is actually going to be an Arab university marketed mainly at students from the Gulf States and the Middle East in general. The people who thought, in a flood of nostalgia for gayer times, that Dockyard Creek would be flooded with Americans once more – albeit students this time, and not the Sixth Fleet – are still reeling from the dawning realisation that it is going to be Mohammed and Tariq rather than Brad and Casey.
You know that public opinion is in danger of gelling in a way that the Prime Minister does not like when he comes out of hiding and makes a rare public appearance to say something to quell the disquiet. He didn’t feel any such urge to quieten public worry about his government’s standing as guarantor for Electrogas Malta Ltd’s bank loans, to the tune of €360 million. No, he let that go. But Muscat popped right out of his box to say that “no mosque will be built at Zonqor Point” and that “students will be attracted from all over the world”. So now he is suddenly the spokesman for Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah’s business. It was for Al Salah to speak on those matters, and not for the Maltese prime minister.
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