Seven-storey home for elderly to rise over Ħaż-Żebbuġ

Photomontages for a proposed seven-storey home for the elderly in a residential area at Ħaż-Żebbuġ just 35m off the Grade 1 scheduled Tal-Għodor windmill, show the impact of the towering building on the existing skyline of the village.

Fulani Properties wants to develop the building along Triq il-Mithna and Triq Giovanni Pullicino, together with four underground levels for cars, a clinic and shops at ground level and 98 rooms in six overlying floors.

The photomontages were requested by the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage due to the proximity of the development to the scheduled, Knights-era windmill.

The requirement for photomontages of developments proposed next to scheduled buildings was the result of a planning circular introduced by former planning minister Aaron Farrugia in 2020.

In March, the developers presented a set of photomontages, but these assumed a skyline in which all potential buildings in the area would eventually rise to five storeys due to present policies.

But the SCH insisted that these visuals could not be considered as an acceptable visual representation of the existing situation in the area.

The new set of photomontages now suggest the new development will create a massive blank party-wall on surrounding two-storey dwellings. The impact on the windmill is less pronounced when viewed from Triq il-Mithna.

The building is being proposed on a site where the Planning Authority in 2019 had already approved two blocks of five storeys for 30 dwellings, also proposed by Fulani Properties, the promoters of the old people’s home.

Existing policies allow the addition of two storeys on old people’s homes, over and above height limits established in local plans, in order to address the country’s shortage of old people’s homes.

The home will reach a height of 24m, making it 6.5m higher than the height limit in the area, which is predominantly formed by two-storey terraced houses.