For those who have an affection for Sliema, whether because they were born there or because they lived or had fun in the place, the transformations which it has undergone, and is still experiencing, create disquiet. It used to be a very civilised place, meant for easy living, where shops and friendly streets were laid out in a happy jumble that truly made you feel the seaside was never far away. It has been converted into a jungle of concrete monstrosities flanked by construction lots that can become quasi-permanent features of the neighbourhood.

How different it used to be. I have written elsewhere about childhood memories of another Sliema. Back when I was still a young boy in the early 1950s, the town serviced the needs of a big chunk of the British fleet gathered in Malta. Yet, most areas were discreet and pleasant. Commercialism on today’s scale was nowhere to be seen.

There were then two sides of Sliema. One was along the shorefront from the Ferries and Gzira, and back to Tigne. Here, the hubbub of sailors and their families seemed to concentrate.

The other side ran from Qui-Si-Sana to the Chalet area, the Exiles, Balluta and St Julian’s along a sleepy promenade characteristic of provincial seaside resorts the world over. In between these zones, residential streets from Tigne and the Nazzarenu church, to Stella Maris and the Sacro Cuor area, to the Lazy Corner and the government primary school, retained a slow-moving charm that must have existed.

Beyond nostalgia

It cannot have been simply a figment of nostalgia, nesting in the memory of people like myself, who would in summer have spent long evenings on the rocks just under Qui-Si-Sana and towards the Chalet, playing in the pools of sea and then going for ice-cream on the Front. Tigne in those days was a British military headquarters. Just off the block of flats where I was born, British soldiers would be on patrol all day long, ever present at the barricaded entry to their barracks. Just down the hill, lines of destroyers would be at anchor in Sliema harbour. Seagulls were a daily sight, swooping down over the water to gobble garbage thrown overboard by the ships or the fish that swarmed to get at their share of food.

In those days, the Maltese residents of Sliema were either well-heeled “benestanti”, who had migrated there from Cottonera and Valletta, or they were working class people who provided services to British officers and to the well-off. Moreover, quite a number of lower to middle level civil servants had come to live there from elsewhere, with their young families, in reaction to the post-World War II shortage of housing. It was a wide-ranging mix of people, clearly bound to grow in numbers. There were lots of new families with young children – part of the baby boom that followed the Second World War.

To be sure Sliema should not be seen as an exercise in nostalgia for the 1950s. Its history goes well beyond that decade, as Winston L Zammit’s book Tas-Sliema fl-Imghoddi, published in 1981, showed. The book traced the “suburb’s” initial growth back in the 1880s and described how the town continued to develop up to the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, by which time it could no longer be considered as a holiday resort.

Too rapid growth

However, with hindsight, Sliema’s fate was set in the 1950s. The younger residents who were then rearing children have got older. Their sons and daughters, well grown-up by now, have mature families of their own and left to raise them elsewhere, in the sprawling “suburbs” of Sliema like Swieqi and Ta’ Giorni.

As one parish priest from the area told me recently, a big social problem that Sliema people face is the solitude of the old. The baby-boomers of the 1950s, and their children, increasingly have problems when it comes to visiting their parents and grandparents who frequently remained in Sliema, because parking has become such a hassle.

Meanwhile, the apartments and houses where the older people lived their lives grew empty and too big, less than easy to maintain and keep tidy. Early on during the late 1960s, it became evident that many of the tidy houses where middle class families had lived comfortable lives, would be under attack.

Tourism started to be developed along commercial lines. Malta started being marketed in successive waves, as a good place where Europeans and others from the white race, could settle and enjoy the good life on the cheap. This marked Sliema out for rapid – too rapid – growth and re-development.

The rocky beaches which fringe the town, the Tower Road seafront which still provides Malta’s best promenade (despite Bugibba/Qawra, Marsascala, and Marsalforn), the quiet residential areas, the apartment blocks which the British forces relinquished as they left the island, were all factors that contributed to the rape of Sliema. So did the bijou villas that the earlier settlers had built and which were increasingly looking decrepit and untidy because they had no one to look after their “mature” gardens.

Property prices

The rape happened under all governments, was tolerated by politicians of all stripes and political temperaments. (Because of this, a friend of mine insists we should call it a “gang rape”.) Still, for a long time, nobody seemed to notice what was going on. Or, perhaps, too many people had a vested interest in letting things run their course, and not necessarily for disreputable reasons.

As part of the “development” process, property prices went up and up; this began well before today’s frenetic capital appreciation. New business and jobs followed. Who did well out of this? Those who believed they could make a killing because they either owned houses and apartments, or had rented property at low rates, under laws which protected their cheap tenures? Those who set up profitable businesses in real estate, retailing and professional services? Those who obtained jobs in the hotels, shops, offices and luxury residential blocks that spread around Sliema? Your guess is as good as mine.

In any event, big scale development took off a long time ago and is still proceeding. Some claim that the real trigger was the rushed promotion of Sliema as a commercial centre. I am less than convinced. It is true that around Bisazza Street and Tower Road, from the Ferries up, once the British fleets left, wide-ranging commercial projects modernised the area. But to argue in this way is to forget that here, in the past, Sliema already provided a big entertainment hub, with some four cinemas, lots of bars and what counted as restaurants in those days. Most such establishments – or their descendants – have either migrated to Paceville (certainly the cinemas) or become tame.

True, hotels came on line to feed new commercial potential into the front, from the Fortina at Tigne to the Preluna just off the Chalet. But there had been hotels at Sliema prior to the tourism take-off. And if one connects the hotel development that took place in Sliema since the 1960s, with what occurred on the other side of the bay out of Balluta, towards Paceville, then one may conclude that Sliema came out second best on hotel development.

Thank God for that. Real estate “development” all by itself, independently of what followed from commercial exploitation of properties, created the conditions under which Sliema can be said to have become quite ugly.

Tall buildings

Consider how the developments on the Front took place. All at once, it seemed, tall apartment blocks materialised. Houses built long ago for rest and leisurely living were ripped down. All concerned ended up happy. Former residents and owners got a good cash handout plus, in most cases, a brand new, modern apartment in the block built over the area where they formerly lived.

Developers made very good profits from customers willing to purchase what they had built, no matter how aesthetically ugly but with a good sea view. Customers who became Sliema residents began to live at a good address and in a pleasant living environment, at least at the beginning.

Only, all those tall buildings were so ugly – still are. They have undermined the attractiveness of the Sliema promenade and its surrounding areas. A complaint has been that the summer shade reaches the rocky beaches much earlier in the afternoon than “before”. And I have met residents who live at the back of the tall buildings who complain how their houses and back-gardens have become dark and humid.

Over the years the process by which building and rebuilding happened within Sliema accelerated. Forget for the moment the MIDI project at Tigne. That was targeted over a long stretch of years and is located around a big self-contained area, where the British barracks were situated.

Possibly more insidious have been the developments that stretch across the width and breadth of Sliema. Just off Tigne and carpeting the area up to Bisazza Street, Manwel Dimech Street, Dingli Street to the “circus” and beyond: Sliema has been allowed to become a big construction site, this while being touted as a major tourist and commercial centre.

Construction galore

Indeed, there was once the decision not to allow building work in the St Julian’s and Sliema area during the summer months. Very frequently, the decision was honoured in the breach, sometimes by the government or its agencies. Just as exasperating is the inordinate number of times that streets and arteries are closed to traffic for the benefit of public and private construction works. There can be no limit to the duration for which such closure is maintained.

A case in point is the blockage which went on for weeks up to last weekend at Rudolphe Street, a major thoroughfare, in the part that leads from the top of Savoy Hill to the top of Manwel Dimech Street, to accommodate road repairs. (?) For months on end, Creche Street at the corner of Windsor Street, was totally blocked by a huge private crane that towered idly over a half-finished block of apartments (presumably), which remains unfinished. Similarly, at the back of the Galaxy Hotel, another sidestreet that clips into Old College Street on the bayside remained closed with construction equipment for months.

In street after street, week after week, for days on end sometimes, through-ways are closed without warning and parking spaces get pre-empted to accommodate construction projects – which, in the main, serve to make Sliema uglier.

To be fair, in recent years, a major embellishment project on the Front did occur. Here too, though, what should have been implemented in five months at the maximum, was stretched over years, to the distress of many citizens. Why?

Qui-Si-Sana

Nor can any discussion of Sliema’s woes ignore what is going on at Tigne point. True the MIDI conversion of the former barracks into an upmarket residential and commercial development was blessed at some time or other by most political forces, partly with the aim of promoting upmarket tourism in the Sliema area. However, in the process, Sliema and its residents now risk being short-changed.

If I understand correctly, one aim that is slowly emerging for the project is to shift Sliema’s commercial centre from the Tower Road-Bisazza Street junction towards Tigne. By pushing hard for new giant parking sites at Qui-Si-Sana and close to the Chalet, the government is implementing a strategy that would shift the parking burdens which such a development will bring in its wake, towards the long suffering residents of Sliema, who already have to experience massive inconveniences when parking.

Surely it is wrong to try and engineer a shift in the focus of Sliema’s commercial activity. If anything, assuming that there will be enough economic growth to underpin new business, the commercial centre should be extended towards Tigne and not shifted. More than this, while the Tigne project is still in the construction phase, steps should have been taken to ensure that within its area, abundant parking spaces are made available to accommodate any new surge of parking requirements that might be generated by the development. Instead, present and added burdens are being attached to the residential area of Qui-Si-Sana, with big encroachments sure to follow on the limited recreation space that such areas still carry. This is neither reasonable nor fair.

Curiously, much of Sliema’s uglification has happened at a time when serious planning methods had been supposedly introduced. Mepa as a “planning authority” would, among other things, act to ensure that politicians did not ally themselves with construction and other barons to despoil Malta. Under Mepa, as Sliema’s case shows, things have continued from bad to worse. It is as if the planners have allied themselves with the barons after all.

Another irony of course is that the residents of Sliema, in their very big majority, are staunchly Nationalist. Much of what has gone wrong happened under a PN administration. Why did residents not use their political clout to ensure that things are done properly?

Many claim that the problems of the place arise from the power of the purse. Developers can go on and on with their projects, despite objections and refusals, because they have money to spend and will eventually get their own way no matter what. Maybe.

On the other hand, some cynics argue that Sliema’s residents have no political clout at all. They back the PN so overwhelmingly, that the party stands little risk of losing significant support, no matter what it does. The recent pussyfooting among PN councillors over the Qui-Si-Sana issue does seem to comfort the cynics in their claims.

No matter which levers – political, planning, or grassroots mobilisation – are pushed to save what remains of Sliema’s charms, they need to be deployed successfully in double quick time. Otherwise the question “Is Sliema ugly?” will soon become rhetorical.