FAA welcomes cancellation of Mistra high-rise towers

Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA) has welcomed the news that the proposed high-rise towers in Mistra will not be built.

In their statement, the organization said it was glad about the news for various reasons, chief amongst them, the “over-abundance of ongoing development on the island.” 

FAA added that the reason was also given in the Ali Report, commissioned by MEPA and carried out by the international council on tall buildings and urban habitat.

“The report recommended that Malta should not consider tall buildings due to the existing property glut,” they said, adding that the statement was also endorsed by MEPA which had confirmed that there was no outstanding demand for commercial property that could not be met by projects in progress.

FAA said that that MEPA should never have issued a permit for some 750 apartments and commercial property, given that it violated its own regulations stipulating that tall buildings cannot be built on ridges.

“Furthermore the Xemxija-Qawra area is already saturated with vacant properties and the Xemxija road is regularly gridlocked, leading the former head of Transport Malta to outline that further development could not be considered before the traffic problem was solved.”

The statement suggests that the reason why MEPA could have refused to grant the full permit was that this very condition had not been addressed. 

FAA said that the MEPA Board had instead accepted the Transport Malta U-turn that the situation is already so bad that a further 2,000 cars in the area would not make it any worse, and that this had been harshly condemned by eNGOs and the Planning Ombudsman. 

“Any bypass to avoid this road would have been built through prime agricultural land, and possibly impacted the Miziep water table,” the statement reads.

“The great loss to Malta is that instead of being protected, an untold wealth of Punic and Roman archaeology in this area was destroyed in order to build the Mistra Village, which was in turn demolished.”

FAA pointed out that the holiday complex had been the first and only project to combine traditional Maltese buildings with advanced engineering, and that it had received international awards and recognition for this achievement.

It further urged the authorities to finally appreciate the historic value of this zone and turn into an archaeological park, an employment-generating project and tourism asset, to the benefit of residents and Malta’s unique heritage.