Residents of The Gardens and its environs are putting their signature to an appeal against the recent MEPA approval of the Pendergardens development project.
A note sent to all residents says the approval rides roughshod over the objections of the neighbouring residents, apart from accepting a reduction in parking spaces that the applicant, Pender Ville Ltd, itself requested for its own reasons.
The note outlines what it calls some ‘monstrous features’ of the proposal:
• A car park for over 1,000 cars, mostly to absorb traffic generated by Paceville and Bay Street. “This is an indecent and ill-conceived component in the heart of a residential zone,” the note states.
• A pedestrian link between Mercury House and Pender Place, “enables disturbance from Paceville to penetrate the tranquil residential neighbourhood”.
• Four blocks of seven floors, two of eight, one of 10 and two towers of 20 and 23 floors, notwithstanding that the brief specified an “indicative maximum height” of six floors.
• 350 residences compressed within 1.8 hectares, resulting in a density eight times higher than the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Residents say the proposal constitutes a health and a security hazard in that it will add to the already very high incidence of carbon, sulphur and nitrogen, and the adverse impact of the regular weekend invasions of Paceville and its environs with the accompanying noise disturbance, fights, bottles, syringes, condoms and urine together with damage to buildings and cars.
MEPA, the note concludes, is sacrificing the quality of life of hundreds of residents of St Julian’s due to its “obsolete” traffic policies and in order to increase profitability for a handful of businessmen. Commercial interests tend to prevail over residential or environmental ones.
According to the note, the way forward includes policies that are practised elsewhere in Europe: the reduction of private car use, the application of a height limitation compatible with that of the neighbouring zones; and, in case of conflict, health and the environment must prevail.
The residents of the neighbouring areas expect the government to correct the brief for Pender Place by omitting the public car park and the pedestrian link with Paceville and to spell out an average height limitation of three floors and to ensure the brief is scrupulously observed by the developers and the planners with a density audit and with no incompatible uses slipped in.