This is a very bad week for Sliema.
The first priority is the ex-Holiday Inn site, which the government is determined to push through this week in order to get the Lm23 million needed for the Air Malta restructuring. All the permits are to be bulldozed at high speed over the dead bodies of the residents, irate residents have claimed. The outline application is up for the board’s consideration next Thursday.
There was the Fort Cambridge meeting on Friday and the news is not good.
The first shock was the latest traffic system being suggested, which, with the pedestrianisation of Bisazza Street, will have all the traffic from the Front go on to Qui si-Sana. This was already known, but now the tunnel has been made one-way from Tigne Beach to the Fortina. So basically, all the traffic from the Ferries towards Tigne has to drive up the steep Censu Scerri Street, spewing fumes all the way. All the traffic from the Ferries will be in a gridlock at the junction of Tigne, St Anthony and Dragut streets.
These developments, with their heavy use of heat-absorbing cement, glass and asphalt, are perfect Urban Heat Canyons. The creation of densely packed high blocks increases the ambient temperature due to their high consumption of electricity for appliances, lifts, and especially, air-conditioning. Because of the way they’re built, the sun’s rays do not bounce them back up to the sky, but bounce off each block’s walls, which absorb them and, along with the emissions of all the traffic, as well as air-conditioning heat expelled into the air around them, these projects greatly add to global warming. “Just as our government claims to be starting its battle against climate change, it’s strongly encouraging the very agents of global warming,” residents claim.
As for the proposed buildings, the block above the guardroom facing the last block on Tigne Street has been narrowed to lessen the sense of enclosure. This will, of course, be compensated by more storeys. The highest block, the one on the Midi side, is up from 16 floors to “around” 17, i.e. 18. The other five or so blocks vary from eight to 15 floors but the situation is still fluid.
The overall view of the development is one block of buildings of massive proportions. Sifting through the limited information available at MEPA, it is calculated that over 1,300 apartments are going to be added to the Tigne peninsula. Who is going to buy these exorbitantly priced properties? Are we ruining the area to add more empty properties to the already 4,000 empty units Malta can boast of?
Further very bad news is that Friday’s Government Gazette published a Legal Notice saying that MEPA has decided that the developers’ study is enough to go on and that an EIA is not needed. It included statements like: “The shadow of the proposed (17 storey) building will be similar to the current situation (5 storeys).”
Similarly, the Traffic Impact statement comes to the conclusion that once the area is compromised, a few hundred extra flats are not going to make a difference! It also claims that the services to the area are sufficient, when residents know that they have been without water in summer for the last seven years, let alone once the over 1,300 new flats on the Tigne peninsula are built.
Moreover, the final plans are going to be submitted tomorrow and, as already said, the board is to meet to decide on it on Thursday. The EU directive stipulates “reasonable notice” which three days is definitely not, but once the Outline Permit is issued, as it looks like it will be, there is no going back. This is an illegality of the first order being committed by the authorities on the people it is meant to represent.
Meanwhile, MEPA is currently winding down its public consultation on the Townsquare project to be built in the heart of Sliema.
However, many may have missed the report, buried within the labyrinthine MEPA website at: http://www.mepa.org.mt/environment/index.htm?SEA/mainpage.htm&1
The Townsquare project is an interesting complex that begins at a low level with the stately old Villa Drago in Tower Road (facing Norman’s Pharmacy). Three two-storey buildings are to be built close to Villa Drago, while an avenue flanked by large four storey blocks will run from the back of the villa to the blocks at the back which step from eight to 12 storeys. The 32-storey tower will dominate the whole project from the centre of this row. The project accommodates 242 apartments and acres of office and shop space.
The developers report a positive response from estate agents but none of them mention that the Tigne peninsula is already heavily over-developed; recent projects will create over 1,300 new apartments in the 500m from Townsquare to the Midi project.
As to construction details: the excavation phase is to take a full year, with 110,000 m3 of rock, the equivalent of a small quarry, being cut and almost 12,000 trips required to cart it away. The work will run from 7am to 5pm, (4 to 7pm in summer); 10 hours of drilling vibrations, noise and dusty trucks rumbling past every day. No mention is made of the route to be taken through the residential area, or the price to be paid by residents in terms of toxic fumes emissions. Neither is the eventual destination of the rubble specified. Or is it to be dumped at sea, further polluting the Mediterranean? Surely such a valuable resource should be recycled?
Astrid Vella, for Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar, asks: “In the context of a glut of 1,300 new apartments on the Tigne peninsula and a further 1,000 within a kilometre, do the disadvantages outweigh the benefits of yet another commercial centre? Do we need more shops when many shut after a short while? Is such an intense exploitation of the site justified or sustainable? Would the quality of life of residents be better served by a mitigation of the project, reducing it to a more reasonable scale? Will Sliema be well served by what is essentially a speculative project that will be putting more traffic on its streets and more pressure on its creaking infrastructure?”