12-storey high rise on Mistra ridge confirmed

An appeal’s tribunal has confirmed a permit for a massive 12-storey development that will add 744 apartments on the site of the former Mistra village in Xemxija.

The tribunal rejected an appeal filed by residents and NGOs against the permit. The proposed development is set to tower over the landscape of northern Malta while aggravating the precarious traffic situation in Xemxija.

The development is being proposed by Charles Camilleri’s Gemxija Limited. 

The project was first given the go-ahead through an outline permit approved under a PN-led administration in 2009, with the full permit being approved under a Labour government in 2013 after the number of apartments were downscaled from 992 to 774.

The permit was renewed in 2018 despite being in breach of a policy introduced in 2014 regulating high rise developments which specifically bans tall buildings on ridges.

But the PA had cited a specific policy in the local plan identifying the site for the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) mechanism which allows extra storeys in return for retaining part of the land as an open space. 

In its decision, the Tribunal upheld the argument that the ad hoc and site specific local plan policy allowing the application of the FAR mechanism to the site, supersedes other policies.

The Tribunal chaired by architect David Mifsud Parker also justified its decision arguing that the permit granted consisted of the renewal of a permit originally issued in 2009 on which works had already commenced. While acknowledging that renewal is not automatic in cases where new policies have been introduced following the original approval, the Tribunal argued that the same site specific local plan policy paving the way for the development is still in place.

The local plan policy in question actually allows development of  up to eight floors and only allows “slight departures” from this limit if the “urban and architectural design is of the highest calibre”.

An original decision by the same tribunal to confirm the permit had been revoked by the law courts in 2023. The court had referred the permit back to the EPRT’s consideration. Excavation works for the mega project were commenced immediately after the court sentence and continued in the next months. 

Back in 2013 when the development was renewed for the first time, Transport Malta had noted “in the absence of an alternative bypass, in order to alleviate the strain on the existing transportation route, the draconian measure would be to halt all development in Xemxija and Mellieha altogether”.

But the report dismissed this option as “not viable” and proposes to “speed up the provision of alternative transportation routes” in the area.