High-rise on St George’s Bay: 35-storey tower on Villa Rosa

Garnet Investments, a company owned by developer Anton Camilleri, has yet again changed its plans for development in St George’s Bay, to incorporate a proposed 35-storey tower adjacent to Bay Street and a 21-storey building directly facing St George’s Bay.

If approved, the proposed changes to what was approved in 2018 will increase the gross floor area of the project from 141,000sq.m to a staggering 237,000sq.m.

The project development statement presented by the developers does not state the number of floors in the development, but this is indicated by images included in the document.

It shows developers have reverted back to plans seen by MaltaToday in 2016, which included a 36-storey tower designed by the office of world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid overlooking St George’s Bay.

But Camilleri’s high-rise plans were shelved and eventually the PA approved a low-rise development encircling the bay, which included a hotel on the Cresta Quay site and a mixed commercial and residential development on the site adjacent to Bay Street, and on the site of the historical Moynihan House.

The latest changes are billed as “aiming to regenerate and develop a new touristic concept… which conforms to the latest strategies and policies regarding tourism for the Maltese Islands,” the developers said.

They said their landmark building will cater for present and future tourist markets and compliment a business hub with “increased revenues and growth for multiple business communities.”

As proposed, the project defies the guidelines set for the area in the local plan, which limits development to a maximum seven storeys above street level in the area adjacent to the Bay Street mall, where the 35-storey tower is now being proposed.

The tower is being proposed in line with the PA’s floor-area ratio, which allows higher buildings in return for larger open spaces, and extra heights for hotels.

The historical Villa Rosa will still be restored, as foreseen in the previous permit, but will be dwarfed by the two high-rise buildings on both sides.

As proposed the project will include 20,000sq.m of public open space and a 14,000sq.m square in front of Villa Rosa.

There will be a total of 237,000sq.m of serviced apartments, hotels, offices, shops, bars, restaurants, an underground car park and a multi-purpose hall; office space will increase from the approved 11,00sq.m to over 16,500sq.m, accommodating over 1,000 hotel and office employees with own accommodation on site, roughly 48% of total projected employees.

This “tied accommodation model” is said to be able to decrease the estimated amount of daily trips from 3,180 according to current plans, to 2,441.

St George’s Bay land grab

Development on the Villa Rosa site is regulated by the 2006 local plan that limits development near the Bay Street mall to seven storeys.

In 2016 MaltaToday revealed that plans had already in the hands of the authorities with the project itself discussed at high government levels when the publicly-owned ITS site was leased to hotelier Silvio Debono for his high-rise development.

Anton Camilleri bought Villa Rosa and Dolphin House from a Cardiff-based investment company for €32 million and €2.6 million respectively.

Subsequently a masterplan for Paceville was issued for public consultation.

A 30-storey tower had been proposed on reclaimed land at the easternmost part of the site, but high-rise development was excluded next to Villa Rosa “to minimise the overshadowing of the beach and to retain Villa Rosa as the prominent landmark overlooking the beach.”

Development on two western sites within Villa Rosa was capped at 10 storeys.

Camilleri insisted that the PA’s siting of three towers on the eastern coast of St George’s Bay, instead of his originally intended plan at Villa Rosa, was not his idea. “I did not write the plan myself. It’s not what I had originally submitted and we still have to make studies on the viability of what is proposed in the master plan.”

But the masterplan was later aborted due to a conflict of interest of the foreign consultants, who were also providing their services to Mercury House developer Joseph Portelli.

In 2018, Camilleri changed plans with a new development approved for a boutique hotel, commercial outlets, offices and apartments at a six-storey height and overlying penthouse. The valley watercourse area was earmarked for 15 two-storey villas with private pools. And the historical Moynihan and adjacent Dolphin properties were to be demolished and redeveloped into a car park, restaurants, offices, a language school, and a four-storey 56-room hotel at Cresta Quay. A study by Archeology Services Ltd for the original environmental impact statement unambiguously concluded that Moynihan House deserved Grade 2 protection.

Both the Moynihan development and Cresta Quay hotel have been retained in the new development, but an unspecified area of greenery could “be left as is in its natural state for this redevelopment proposal.”

The proposed Villa Rosa development will be adjacent to the DB project, which consists of two 17-storey towers and a 12-storey hotel on land given a €60 million price tag, but of which only €15 million was to be paid as a down-payment.