MDA president still hoping for €2.4 million land buy at Zonqor

The Malta Developers’ Association’s president, Sandro Chetcuti, has an interest in a large tract of land in Marsaskala that is adjacent to the Zonqor Point area where the Maltese government would like to see a private university built.

Chetcuti is not yet the owner of the land, which covers a total of 7,850 square metres in agricultural land and surrounding garigue.

But a promise-of-sale agreement he signed in 2006 has been regularly renewed since then.

As it stands, the land occupies the undeveloped area inside a built-up zone at the tip of Marsaskala, right beneath the Zonqor area where it is believed the American University of Malta would be situated.

The land borders on Triq l-Ghagusa, and was introduced into the building scheme back in 2006 during the Nationalist government’s controversial extension of building zones.

Chetcuti entered into the Lm1.03 million deal (€2.4 million) together with renowned property developer Anton Camilleri of Garnet Investments, which recently acquired the Villa Rosa and St George’s Bay Hotel in St Julian’s for €15 million.

Although the promise-of-sale agreement was extended, in 2008 one of the vendors – Horace Gatt – had written to the rest of the Gatt family’s heirs informing them that Chetcuti wanted to complete the acquisition. Since the vendors owned just nine parts out of 13 of the entire land, Chetcuti’s notary – Labour MP Charles Mangion – suggested they file a court application so that the court assumes responsibility for the remaining land, owned by unidentified heirs.

Government critics have repeatedly claimed that lands bordering or forming part of Zonqor Point, identified for the construction of the controversial American University, belong to property owners close to the Labour establishment.

But there is no evidence to suggest that Chetcuti’s pending land deal had any bearing on the proposal to have Zonqor host the American University. Back in June, Sandro Chetcuti had refuted suggestions that the land he had tried to acquire since 2006 had anything to do with the private university, in comments to The Malta Independent.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has insisted that part of AUM’s campus will still be constructed at Zonqor, which he claims will be of benefit to the south of the island.

Muscat’s decision comes after a 3,000-strong protest led by the newly-formed Front Harsien ODZ, thronged Valletta’s Republic Street to protest the unilateral decision to hand over the land to a Jordanian construction company, Sadeen, to create the fledgling American University of Malta, which has not yet been licensed by the higher-education regulator.

Another part of the campus is to be situated somewhere in Cottonera.

In his comments to the Independent, Chetcuti had admitted being still interested in acquiring the plot of land, and that the deal had not yet materialised due to inheritance issues. “It does not belong to me because the deal did not go through. I did not buy it and I swear on my children’s lives that it has nothing to do with the university project,” Chetcuti had said. 

Days after the Maltese government announced plans for a 4,000-student campus at Zonqor Point, much to the consternation of the environmental lobby, Chetcuti had actually called for a “genuine effort” to find an alternative, less pristine site for the university.

Earlier in November 2014, Chetcuti championed the proposal to build three hotels on the land stretching from Smart City to Zonqor Point, which he had described as “shabby and unused.” The proposal came on the strength of a brief for the “regeneration of the south”, prepared by the government’s privatisation unit at the request of the Consultative Council for the South, led by Labour MP Silvio Parnis.

Chetcuti, who sits on the council in his personal capacity, had said that the country needs to attract tourism to the south by developing hotels in “shabby, unused and abandoned areas in the south.”

These areas, Chetcuti had insisted, “are not good for agricultural purposes or to be enjoyed as open countryside.” 

The brief for the regeneration of the south, which was later dismissed by the Prime Minister, proposed the transfer of public land to the private sector via 99-year concessions to build a five-star hotel in the vicinity of Smart City, a boutique hotel in the historic Fort St Leonard and a hotel at Zonqor Point.