Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar together with St Julian’s residents and Mayor have roundly condemned the application for a massive project comprising some 57 apartments, shops and offices on a site in between St Elias Street and B’Kara Hill, the narrowest streets of the St Julian’s Urban Conservation Area.
Astrid Vella, FAA Coordinator, explained that since this large site is covered by a policy in the St Julian’s Local Plan, it is to be planned through a masterplan/outline plan for the whole site not through piecemeal applications for parts of the site in order to avoid the essential studies that the full project would require. What is being done is salami slicing which contravenes EU policy.
Astrid Vella stressed the need for a Traffic Impact Statement, and said that the application was being processed without the necessary geological studies re site excavation, saying that the Planning Authority accepts abusive applications from ‘barunijiet’ (powerful developers) while crucifying residents.
When this project is followed by its twin block on the rest of the site, the whole development is expected to exceed 120 apartments/shops and offices, which will generate traffic of well over 250 cars in an area which cannot even cope with existing traffic. This will obviously increase air pollution and irrevocably undermine the quality of life and health of residents.
Creating vehicular access to B’Kara Hill will bring about the destruction of what is thought to be the oldest surviving house in St Julian’s.
St Julian’s Mayor Albert Buttigieg spoke out strongly against the commercialisation of St Julian’s at the cost of residents’ well-being, saying “developers have built up most of St Julian’s, have taken over pavements and parking spaces, and now they’ve even been given the sea”. He denounced the bullying of residents who are increasingly being driven out of St Julian’s because of encroaching development.
Mayor Buttigieg also condemned the fact that while all Malta has opened up again after Covid, the Planning Authority was still holding out against allowing objectors to attend hearings, insisting on online participation, which discriminates against seniors who are not IT conversant. This is a grave injustice especially since most of St Julian’s original residents are now elderly (this was revised when the Planning Authority announced, immediately after the press conference, that objectors would be allowed at hearings as of Wednesday 22nd July, the day of the St Julian’s hearing).
Albert Buttigieg said that this project would ruin the urban conservation atmosphere of St Julian’s oldest zone, and that if granted, this project would reduce even this area to an extension of Paceville, saying that St Julian’s is being turned into a ‘luxurious slum’. He concluded by urging residents to attend the hearing of this application at the Planning Authority on Wednesday 22nd July after 9.30am.
