A few days ago, a large number of The Gardens and St Julian’s residents filed a formal objection against the PenderGardens development (application 04269/07, for the construction of “three levels underground parking (3 floors) and one commercial floor, a mezzanine commercial floor at pedestrian bridge level and two residential towers 22 and 20 floors above”, notified in The Malta Independent on 1 December 2007). The proposed works are objected to on legal and technical grounds, which claim MEPA malpractice and the environmental problems that would emanate from the development as approved.
If the irregular procedure referred to in Appendix 1 was allowed to produce a fait accompli, whether through incompetence, neglect of citizen rights, or abuse, then one can only imagine how the whole planning process would be thrown completely out of control, to the detriment of the environment and in defiance of law and order, in the best style of a banana republic, the residents said.
Application PA 04269/07 is based on Outline Permit PA 05804/05 decided on 1 February 2007. That decision was appealed against on various grounds. The relative appeal (PAB 75/07) is still being heard by the Planning Appeals Board.
In accordance with judicial practice generally, and also for clear reasons of logic, no consideration of full applications emanating from the outline permit appealed against is warranted before the said appeal is finally decided.
It is clearly abusive to proceed with the building of any edifice if the foundations are dubious, to use an appropriate metaphor.
Bearing in mind that the total development proposed for the site at Pender Place, is a major project, and not a minor work that is easily reversed, the present objectors, also the plaintiffs in the appeal referred to, have a clear interest in a suspension of the application objected to, in order to preclude a fait accompli.
The applicant company would also be risking abortive effort and expense if it were to proceed with construction, based on an unresolved permit scenario. It would be wrong for MEPA to collaborate with the applicant company, towards the promotion of a damaging and untenable situation. It is not enough to wash one’s hands in the comfort that applicant proceeds at his own risk. If MEPA chooses to encourage the applicant company to bulldoze its way forward in the face of the ongoing appeals and with impunity, then it must share in the risk referred to while exposing itself to judicial action that may be taken in the future. This irresponsible course is not worthy of an authority that is supposed to champion the welfare of the environment in general, and the just environmental interests of the residents of these islands, in particular, the residents say.
The original application had indeed been notified to the public in October 2005 through the usual site notice and it had also been published in The Malta Independent. In both cases, the public was informed that the drawings covered by the application were available for inspection at the Authority’s offices in Floriana. Common sense dictates that the drawings the public was invited to inspect were precisely those drawings submitted by the applicant company concurrently with its application.
Many people inspected the said drawings and submitted their formal objection against the work applied for on grounds emanating from those drawings. The Authority registered about 200 signatories as formal objectors. Other residents from the neighbourhood did not submit a formal objection as they were not unduly concerned with the six storey high blocks presented in the drawings that they too were invited to inspect.
Fifteen months later, the Outline Application was submitted to the MEPA Board for its decision, and an approval was abusively granted for a project that was as different from the one originally applied for, as night is from day. A computerised model of the new project, published in the media on 2 February 2007, sent shockwaves throughout the neighbourhoods of St Julian’s.
The public was effectively deceived and now presented with a fait accompli. A submission was lodged before the MEPA Auditor in which the deception was reported and redress sought.
This action was obstructed by MEPA itself, through the simple ruse of desisting from renewing the appointment of the Auditor or of his staff. A legal protest was also filed in the Civil Courts against the chairman and members of the MEPA board.
The unregistered objectors had been misled into thinking that the projected buildings would not exceed a height of six floors. With reference to the central zone referenced as PP2, the Development Brief had stipulated an “indicative maximum (height) 6 floors”.
The new project, slipped behind their backs and abusively approved, indicated instead 8, 10, 12, 22 and 23 floors in zones PP2 and PP3. The requirements of the Development Brief in terms of building height, were turned on there head, to bring about a scenario in which the indicative max. height of six floors was in fact exceeded everywhere.
Outline Permit PA 05804/05, granted on 1 February 2007, is null and void, also in view of the fact that the new project approved in that permit included serious departures from the Development Brief, in terms of zoning, land use, specific height stipulations and application of Floor Area Ratio.
It is well known that the Authority is not empowered to unilaterally implement, or else allow to be implemented, substantial changes to the Development Brief. Should such changes be contemplated, the, the only legal procedure to enable the changes would involve a new publication of an amended Development Brief. This procedure is legally and logically required, precisely to preclude the deceit inflicted upon the public by a botched procedure jointly conducted by the applicant company and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
MEPA’s approval of the unadvertised project on 1 February 2007, misleadingly using the same reference number PA 05804/05, was a clear and serious abuse that must be redressed firmly and immediately. Another unwise approval, this time of PA 04269/07, will amount to a dangerous leap from the frying pan into the fire.
Objections based on technical aspects
Public car park (occupying the basement levels)
The experiences of the Sliema car park and of the suspended Qui-si-Sana car park, not to mention the one proposed at Pender Place, can only confirm, if confirmation was needed, that residents vehemently oppose public car parks in their neighbourhoods, in view of the increased traffic that these inevitably attract. Residents’ opposition to public car parks is fully justified on several grounds.
The associated influx of hundreds of extraneous drivers and passengers, including late night pub-crawlers, is bound to prejudice the peace, tranquillity and security justly desired in residential neighbourhoods. The residents of the neighbourhoods surrounding the Pender Place site have been suffering the negative impacts from visitors to the leisure zones at Paceville and Baystreet for many years. The proposed public car park, together with the proposed pedestrian link between Pender Place and Paceville will clearly aggravate the problem.
In the second place, there is now universal awareness that the pollution of the air we breathe, caused by vehicular emissions, has an immense negative impact on the environment, both at a global and at a local level.
MEPA’s continued insistence to impose a public car park in the neighbourhoods just mentioned, against the residents’ wishes, is inexplicable and contradicts some of the Authority’s recent measures in the right direction. The original draft local plan for St Julians had indicated several less objectionable locations for public car parks in the area, including one to the north of the parish church. The recent introduction of Residents Parking Schemes, the Park & Ride Scheme envisaged at Luxol, together with free public transport just announced for the end-of-year festivities, give reasons to hope that MEPA may be changing its ways, and that it may realise that superior solutions to the proposed car park do exist.
Overdevelopment
The neighbourhoods on the east (Haven Lodge) and south (The Gardens) of the site at Pender Place have been developed over the past 50 years, with maximum building heights of four and two floors respectively. The present objectors were already aggrieved that the Development Brief applied an “indicative maximum” of six floors for the central Zone PP2, instead of the more prudent limitation of three floors, being an intermediate height such as is normally adopted in planning praxis. The objectors do not understand the departure from this praxis except to consider it as a benefit for the developers in terms of real estate speculation, but as a detriment to their neighbourhoods in terms of over-crowdedness.
The oversupply of vacant residences is disquieting indeed, even if one were to deduct some 10 to 20,000 units in respect of second homes or homes held in reserve for progeny. Meanwhile, it would seem that the cemetery of vacant buildings is destined to become part of the landscape of these islands as an eternal scourge – a veritable environmental disaster and for which no solutions appear on the horizon. The present objectors, also as Maltese with love for their town and country, have every interest to see that the environmental tragedy does not get worse, particularly in their town, as has been happening in the Sliema-St, Julian’s conurbation.
Product Malta, already threatened with permanent building site symptoms, derelict or un-maintained buildings and general scruffiness, stands to become further damaged by the insensitive insertion of the towers objected to, in Malta’s tourist mecca. The towers will dominate and usurp the pristine fishing village ambience that St Julian’s famously offers to a million visitors a year, for their money.