Church commission calls for strip club ban in harsh critique of Paceville masterplan

Paceville several strip clubs jar with the country’s efforts to give women dignity and respect, as well as with the government’s attempt to brand the zone as a high-quality area, the Church’s Environment Commission (KA) has claimed.

“Browsing through in-flight magazines on flights to Malta sometimes gives one the impression that Paceville is a red-light district and not an entertainment area for all,” the KA said in an opinion paper on the controversial Paceville masterplan that is currently open to public consultation. “In view of the non-compatibility of the targeted branding and current use, the KA recommends that the masterplan revisits the current uses of commercial establishments in the area.”

The masterplan envisages nine high-rise developments in Paceville, including on the current ITS, Corinthia and Villa Rosa sites. A 40-story tower proposed on the Mercury House site in the centre of Paceville will become Malta’s tallest skyscraper.

However, the masterplan – drafted for the Planning Authority by consultants Mott MacDonald and Broadway Maylan – has attracted harsh criticism, largely due to its proposed expropriations of houses and businesses, coastside development, land reclamation by Portomaso, and lack of impact assessments.

The Church’s Commission lambasted the masterplan as one full of “buzz words and colourul artistic impressions” and claimed that its target is “once again motivated by unbridled development aimed at maximizing economic gain over and above the wellbeing of residents and the general population”.

It warned that any land reclamation may damage the rich marine biodiversity in the area, and indeed proposed that the masterplan include further safeguards to guarantee the production of such wildlife.

It also called on the government to seriously consider the concerns of the communities of Paceville, St Julian’s, Swieqi and Pembroke, and to come clean on who will be forking the costs of implementing the masterplan.

“One expects that the developments that will benefit from such a masterplan should contribute to a fund that will upgrade the infrastructure and pay for expropriations that will ultimately benefit such developments,” it said.

“This is yet another opportunity to give center stage to economic development. Various administrations have plagued Malta with the praxis of putting economic interests above all other considerations and guising them as projects of national importance. In reality, most of these projects benefit a handful of ‘patrons’ while short-changing the common citizen whose voice rarely makes it to the corridors of power. These projects are usually proposed as fait accompli, and any public consultation is used as an attempt to ‘smoothen’ the negative impacts of the project rather than to seriously consider its viability.

“We have an opportunity [by revising the Paceville masterplan] to challenge the predominant model of development and wealth that puts profit before any consideration of the common good and the wellbeing of communities and their surroundings.”