Will Fort Tigné end up sold to the highest bidder?

If you read between the lines, you can easily hear Din l-Art Ħelwa’s frustration as it sees yet another piece of Maltese history being sacrificed at the altar of seemingly insatiable greed.

For years, it has been campaigning unsuccessfully for Qbajjar Fort in Gozo to be restored for posterity, fearing commercial interests gleefully rubbing their hands as they imagine how it could be exploited.

And now, we have another case with the NGO fighting to save Fort Tigné from being sold to developer Joseph Portelli for €2.5 million to be turned into a hotel.

DLĦ wrote to Prime Minister Robert Abela “presenting a concrete, constructive and financially viable solution” for the fort, promising to “preserve, restore and repurpose it exclusively for cultural, educational and community purposes, making it accessible to all”.

We simply cannot afford to sell off another piece of history to the highest bidder

A bit of history would not go amiss. The fort forms part of MIDI’s 2000 concession that includes Manoel Island.

While negotiations are under way with the government for the latter to be given back to the public, MIDI has been slowly but surely selling off developments at Tigné Point, from the Mall in 2013, to 11 commercial units and the T3 for €10.2 million this week.

The latter was meant to raise cash needed to redeem its €50 million bond due to mature in July 2026. Bear in mind that MIDI reported three consecutive years of losses but hopes that apartment sales in its Q3 development will boost revenue to €36 million in 2025. 

Fair enough, MIDI is within its rights to do what it must to repay the bond: Why should bondholders suffer? Perhaps it was always on the cards that the company would eventually sell its properties and be wound up?

On to the fort itself. The 1992 Development Brief envisaged a 200-bedroom hotel, of two or three storeys, which would “wrap-around” Fort Tigné, together with two 80-bedroom hotels; this was eventually changed to a single 300-bedroom hotel.

How this could conceivably morph into a hotel within the fort itself beggars belief.

And then, there is the Portelli factor: it is no wonder that the decision to sell Fort Tigné to Portelli strikes fear into the heart of the NGO.

No matter what the current plans are, the NGO knows how the developer got away with unbelievable projects, even defying the court in the case of Sannat.

No sooner had the NGO suggested that it buys the 75 years left on the fort’s lease than the prime minister also came out criticising the sale to Portelli.

Abela did not mince his words and went so far as to say that a hotel – even the ‘high-end’ one proposed – inside Fort Tigné would be “obscene”.

It is not clear how the sale can be stopped: Abela himself said that MIDI had “watertight” contractual rights on the site – but there is a 2012 law that allows the government to acquire historic buildings to make them available to the public.

Is the government thinking of buying back the lease itself? Perhaps then allowing DLĦ to restore it as the NGO has done with dozens of other sites and monuments?

What is at stake? Bear in mind that the fort is on a preliminary list of sites Malta plans to nominate to UNESCO for world heritage status. Surely, this is more important to tourism than having yet another hotel?

Whether the NGO’s solution prevails or Abela finds another way out, one thing is indisputable: we simply cannot afford to sell off another piece of history to the highest bidder.