Paceville masterplan: AD leader calls for inquiry, government to review plan

Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Arnold Cassola has called for a magisterial inquiry into the Paceville masterplan, following revelations at Wednesday’s environment committee meeting.

During Wednesday’s grilling of the consultants from MottMacDonald and Broadway Malyon, the owner of the St George’s Park Complex in Paceville revealed that the masterplan’s vision for the proposed Mercury House skyscraper is identical to that he had seen in a brief back in April, before the plan had even been released.

“A real estate agent had approached me to ask me whether I would be interested in purchasing a floor of the proposed Mercury House development,” Peter Paul Testaferrata Moroni Viani said. “The masterplan reflects the exact same information that was present in the Mercury House brief that was presented to me back in April.”

The Mercury House skyscraper - designed by the world famous architecutural firm of Zaha Hadid - has been proposed by Gozitan developer Joseph Portelli. If approved, it will rise to 40 storeys, which will make it the tallest building in Malta.

Shadow environment minister Marthese Portelli said that Testaferrata Moroni Viani’s claim proves that the masterplan was drafted to facilitate the interests of a select few developers. Similarly, Cassola has now said it is “obvious” that somebody from Mott MacDonald had been given a very good idea of the Mercury House developers’ desires.

“Who was it? Somebody from Mercury House developers? Somebody from the Planning Authority? Or somebody who might have a finger in both organisations?” Cassola asked.

During the committee, Mott MacDonald official Damien Price admitted that the firm had verbally informed Planning Authority’s chairman Johann Buttigieg that they had served as engineering consultants on the Mercury House project, but were given the go-ahead that this didn’t constitute a conflict of interest. When questioned by MPs, Buttigieg stuck to his guns, insisting that the firm didn’t have a conflict of interest and that indeed it wasn’t working for Joseph Portelli but for Zaha Hadid.

Government to ‘review’ Paceville masterplan

Parliamentary secretary for planning Deborah Schembri – who had previously said that a foreign consultancy firm was chosen specifically to avoid potential conflicts of interest – insisted that the Planning Authority hadn’t informed her of Mott MacDonald’s consultancy work on the Mercury House project until recently. In a statement today, she said that the government will review the masterplan “so as to put people’s minds at rest”.

“The government has listened to the questions that were raised during yesterday’s committee meeting. It doesn’t want a shadow to be cast on what is the first holistic plan for Paceville after several years of neglect,” she said.

Schembri also noted that a different branch of Mott MacDonald had carried out consultancy work on the Mercury House project than the one that had directly worked on the Paceville masterplan.

“A consultation process is ongoing, and a final masterplan will only be released after all the stakeholders’ needs have been analyzed.”