Don’t demolish 1800s townhouse, case officer tells Planning Authority

The Planning Authority’s planning commission will decide 20 May the fate of an old Birkirkara townhouse, whose demolition for speculative development signals it might not be torn down.

The two-storey building inside the urban conservation area is earmarked for a four-storey development with 10 garages, a terraced house, two maisonettes and nine apartments.

But it hit a brick wall after the case officer recommended its refusal after describing it as “speculative development”.

The development is being proposed by Jason Mifsud’s Grand Property Holdings, and designed by architect and former planning minister George Pullicino.

The case officer said the project would “rescind the entirety of the heritage value of the site in favour of a speculative development.”

Earlier plans foresaw the complete demolition of the buildings, but new plans proposed the part demolition, and retaining the main façade with its St Joseph niche and the part of building visible from the street. Internally, the building will be partially gutted and some architectural features re-utilised within the new build.

The Santa Rita street building is adorned by an arched niche of St Joseph at an angular pediment topped by a cross, with a cornice at the bottom, a metal hook and lamp, and an 1886 inscription granting an indulgence by Mgr Antonio Mario Buhagiar. Located at the edge of the town’s UCA, it is surrounded by modern and traditional buildings.

But the case officer said the redevelopment of this site was sensitive, as it leads pedestrians into one of the older parts of the Birkirkara UCA. “With the right and sensitive alterations and through restoration of the site, it can be developed into an exemplary building showcasing out heritage while also being habitable.”

Instead the case officer proposed its conservation.

As proposed the development will disrupt the streetscape with blank party walls, as well as committing the rest of the perimeter for further extensions into the UCA.

Architect George Pullicino insisted that the site lies at the end of the UCA, and is already surrounded by three-storey high buildings.  The case officer disagreed, arguing that another ‘transition’ would only add more pressure on the area with nothing but economic gain for the developer. “The opposite buildings located within scheme cannot be taken into consideration since if these structures had to be considered, all the properties within UCA that front-schemed areas can be committed with the same height.”

Pullicino argued that that most of the rooms in the existing building are very small, and sub-standard for today’s residential sanitary requirements and are either dangerous, or in a very bad condition in terms of structural stability. Moreover, the building used to house five separate household units, and the building is so fragmented “that it is impossible to turn it into decent households to today’s standards”.

Conservation NGO Din l-Art Helwa has expressed its full agreement with the recommendations made by the case officer and is calling on the PA’s planning commission to uphold it.