Updated 1pm, adds PA comments
A new planning control application has set its sights on one of the last undeveloped tracts of land in Fgura for development, with preliminary plans showing five-storey blocks packed densely together.
The application, PC/00024/22, was filed by developer Anton Camilleri, who is behind plans to build two high-rise towers in St George’s Bay, and architect Colin Zammit, who designed Minister Ian Borg’s controversial ODZ swimming pool as well as a large cluster development directly abutting Għargħur’s urban conservation area.
The planning control application, which is used to establish zoning and building heights as well as land use, was filed on over 23,000 square metres of undeveloped land on Triq id-Dejma, Triq il-Parroċċa and Triq il-Merħba.
NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa has filed an objection to the proposal, calling it a “deplorable” attempt to turn one of the last green areas in Fgura into an “over-developed maze of five-storey blocks”.
The proposal, they said, would pack the site with residential and commercial buildings, with only 350 square metres of the over 23,000 available on the plot being reserved for community services. The rest of the space, they continued, would be taken up by the streets required to separate these blocks.
“The developer is making a mockery of the requirement to provide 15 per cent public open space by labelling the street that separates the proposed residential area from the commercial area as ‘open space’,” Din l-Art Ħelwa said.
“This nine-metre-wide street wedged between five-storey buildings is necessary for the proposed apartments and commercial outlets to have direct frontage on a public road. As proposed, it will not serve the community but simply allow the developer to claim to have provided the mandatory 15 per cent open space without actually having to give up any land for public use. Public open space is critical to provide residents with recreational outdoor areas to escape the chaos and congestion that has come to define our urban centres,” they continued.
“The Planning Authority cannot approve this flagrant attempt to cheat the public of what is rightly theirs.”
The Fgura local council has also objected to the application. The proposed 15 per cent open space was “misleading”, it said, given that this would eventually mostly consist of access roads.
In comments to Times of Malta, a spokesperson for the Planning Authority said that the site earmarked for the application was one of many included in the development zone as part of the rationalisation exercise.
“The planning control application does not give a landowner the right to start building but determines the parameters that planning application will be assessed against should a planning application be submitted,” he said.
“PC 24/22 is still at the initial stage and still needs to be considered and determined by the Planning Authority following thorough assessment and studies as required,” the spokesperson said.