Labour donors seek permit for Marsaskala shopping mall after fuel station

One of Labour’s major donors is hoping to get a green light for a 10,000 sq.m shopping mall right outside the Marsaskala family park.

Earmarking a disused quarry on Triq Sant Antnin, the Schembri Barbros group can bank on a recent permit for their adjacent fuel station – which is already outside development zones – setting the precedent for the construction.

The controversial 1,500 sq.m fuel station was granted a permit only recently, eight years after the original application was filed. The applicant is nominally Patrick Guntrip, but his wife Josephine is a shareholder in a Schembri Barbros subsidiary.

Josephine Guntrip is a shareholder in Seaview Construction, which donated €20,000 to Labour through its subsidiary Seaview & Sons.

Seaview is in the main owned by the Schembri family, of the Schembri Barbros construction group. Seaview & Sons also runs the Pit Stop fuel station in Attard, amongst others.

The fuel station application was originally lodged in 2009, but since Labour’s election and tweaks to planning rules, licences of fuel stations inside town centres – in this case a Floriana licence – were allowed to be relocated outside development zones.

The application got a green light from the PA’s planning directorate but was opposed by the Environment and Resources Authority. A €50,000 planning gain was imposed on the applicants for any environmental damage caused.

Now the Environment and Resources Authority is objecting to the development of the rest of the area, a stretch of land outside development zones that forks off the main road leading into Marsaskala.

The land hosts a spent quarry which the Schembri group want to develop into a shopping mall, offices and restaurants over some 9,750 sq.m.

The ERA said that although the disused quarry is not an environmentally sensitive piece of land, this alone does not mean the area should be developed any which way.

“The retention of the area as open space, possible restoration into agricultural uses or other similar legitimate uses of the spent quarry, which is intended to improve the overall environmental quality of this rural area… ERA considers the proposed mixed development of concern from an environmental point of view given that this development would continue to introduce further commercial and urban development in a quarry, which should preferably be reinstated back to agriculture use, considering its location along an urban fringe,” the authority said.

“Such urban-type developments are more appropriate in areas already designated for such use. Given the site context being a spent quarry located outside development zone (ODZ), such uses should not be encouraged given that this is not designated for such uses.”

The ERA said the proposal was objectionable in principle, and demanded that a full environmental impact assessment is carried out, with full details of car parking spaces, and details on interventions on trees, and effects on air quality through the increase in traffic.

Not all representations to the PA have been negative.

One of the citizen representations, from Edward Grima Baldacchino of Zejtun, argued that the south should not be deprived of economic investment that could upgrade a derelict area. “This is a completely different, road-level quarry... it is completely abandoned and not active. No one objected to the major arterial road or the Family Park or Inspire Complex or Wasteserv facility that were all taken from parts of this same disused quarry. It is high time common sense prevailed about the remaining part of this abandoned quarry… This can hardly be called ODZ when it is exactly on the periphery of and surrounded by built-up areas on all sides.”

Environmental NGO Nature Trust has objected to the ODZ application. “It is clear abuse of ODZ land to commercialise and capitalise from a parcel of land which should not be developed at the first instance. Having a pre-1968 quarry, which has been naturally recolonised in parts, should be no excuse for development, and instead should be rehabilitated to its natural state by planting trees and shrubs.

“Marsascala has more than enough restaurants and other commercial venues. Such an application would lead to urban sprawl and considering a large part of ODZ – Zonqor – has already been given up to development, such an application should be outright refused.”

One of the objectors, Dr Naomi Mugliette, said the site was not barren and had at least 30 trees on site including a number of carob trees and bamboo. “The disused quarry constitutes only approximately one-third of proposed site [while] the rest of the plot consists of undeveloped land full of decades old vegetation and fauna.”

Din l-Art Helwa (DLH) also objected to the application. “DLH does not agree that spent quarries should be converted to large commercial areas as this does not constitute the rehabilitation of a quarry. Furthermore such a development will lead to further urban sprawl within ODZ.”

Construction loves Labour

Labour’s first ever donation report to the Electoral Commission under party financing rules shows that its highest individual donors in 2016 include the construction company GAP Holdings, Attard Bros, Hal Mann, as well as the operator of the Pit Stop fuel station in Attard.

In total it collected €93,000 in donations of over €7,000, which require identification of the individual donor under party financing rules.

These donors comprised Attard Bros and Eurocraft (€10,000 each), €20,000 from Seaview & Sons, which operate the Pit Stop fuel station, €10,000 from Camland – of developer Charles Camilleri, who is behind a high-rise proposal for the former Jerma hotel – GAP Holdings, Hal Mann, and BV Formosa, and €13,000 from the Marsaxlokk Labour Party club.

Attard Bros was granted approval for the development of 17,600 square metres of agricultural land in Marsaxlokk, on the same day the PA rejected a similar 38,600 square metre development in Mosta: both sites were included in the extension of building boundaries carried out by the PN government in 2006.

GAP Holdings is planning a 40-storey tower hotel on the former Holiday Inn hotel it acquired through the Fort Cambridge development brief.

Charles ‘il-Franciz’ Camilleri, who is behind a proposed 28-storey tower project at the former Jerma Palace Hotel, donated €10,000. His relative Anton – also known by the ‘Franciz’ moniker – is the owner of the Villa Rosa project.