Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA) welcomes the news that the high-rise Mistra Towers will not be built, for a number of reasons, foremost among them, the “over-abundance of ongoing development on the island.”
This was the same reason given when the Ali Report, commissioned by MEPA and carried out by the international Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat recommended that Malta should not consider tall buildings due to the existing property glut. This was endorsed by MEPA which had confirmed that there was no outstanding demand for commercial property that could not be met by projects in progress.
FAA had maintained that MEPA should never have issued a permit for some 750 apartments plus commercial property as this violated its own regulations which stipulate that tall buildings cannot be built on ridges. Furthermore the Xemxija-Qawra area is already saturated in vacant properties and the Xemxija road is regularly gridlocked, leading the former head of Transport Malta to stipulate that further development could not be considered before the traffic problem was solved. This was the very reason why MEPA could have refused to grant the full permit, as this condition had not been addressed. Instead the MEPA Board had accepted the Transport Malta U-turn that the situation is already so bad that a further 2,000 cars in the area would not make it any worse – a fact roundly condemned by eNGOs and the Planning Ombudsman. Any bypass to avoid this road would have been built through prime agricultural land, and possibly impacted the Miziep water table.
The great loss to Malta is that instead of being protected, an untold wealth of Punic and Roman archaeology in this area was destroyed in order to build the Mistra Village, which was in turn demolished. This holiday complex was the first and only project to combine traditional Maltese buildings with advanced engineering, and had received international awards and recognition for this achievement. FAA urges the authorities to finally appreciate the historic value of this zone and turn into an archaeological park, an employment-generating project and tourism asset, to the benefit of residents and Malta’s unique heritage.
