The government will fork out €450,000 to a group of landlords in order to stop the eviction of a Sliema band club from its premises.
The temporary landlords – who hold the property until 2026 – were threatening to kick out the Stella Maris Band Club from a large townhouse on Sliema’s Annunciation Square.
The eviction was set for today, at 9.30am, after more than a decade of legal battles.
Times of Malta has learnt that on the eve of the eviction the group of landlords met with government officials and settled on a sum of €450,000 as a form of rent for the property.
The figure is nearly double that initially offered by the government but is significantly less than the €1.8 million the landlords were understood to be demanding.
A government source said the parties had reached a “gentleman’s agreement” and the official paperwork would be drafted in the coming days.
The Stella Maris Band Club has used the premises under a lease dating back to 1959 but the club has been there since the 1920s.
However, the landlords, a group of around a dozen split across two families, had acquired the premises under a temporary emphyteusis dating back to 1876 which is set to expire in 2026.
The direct owner of the property is the Joint Office which was set up in the 1990s to administer properties transferred to the government from the church.
The saga started over 12 years ago when the landlords of the premises filed proceedings before the Rent Regulation Board in a bid to regain possession of the property leased out to the Stella Maris Band Club.
They argued that the tenants had carried out structural works without their consent and without the landlords being aware of the application for planning permits.
The Stella Maris Band Club had said the works were ordinary maintenance, needed to ensure the continued use of the property.
What followed was a long legal road involving the Constitutional Court and legal ammendments drawn up by the government in a bid to try and save band clubs from facing similar eviction.
In 2018, the government introduced legal amendments which blocked evictions of band clubs when these undertook structural works without landlords’ consent, provided the works were related to “philharmonic or social activities”.
That new law was to apply retroactively.
However, a court eventually agreed with the landlords that the law could not be used to protect a club even when it had breached a contract or indeed the law.