Local plan to accommodate new Chinese Embassy

The amendment, issued for public consultation last week, states that the site is suitable for the development of an embassy as it is located within extensive landscaped open areas and directly adjacent to a  planned road that is to link Regional Road with Pembroke.

In the local plan approved by the government in 2006, the area now earmarked for an embassy, was allocated for the development of three-storey high maisonettes and flats on the condition that mature trees found in the area are safeguarded.  The same condition is kept in the proposed revision.

The embassy will be constructed within development zones, as the area was already schemed for development since the 1990s, even though it has remained undeveloped for the past two decades.

The local plan stipulated that a maximum of 304 new housing units could be built in this zone, as well as in another area of the same size in Pembroke, which was also allocated to housing in the local plan.

In February 2007, MaltaToday reported that China had asked the government for a plot of land of up to 10,000 square metres in Pembroke - a prime site that has been earmarked for development by foreign powers since World War II.

The land earmarked in the local plan changes - roughly the size of the existing Pembroke cemetery - is significantly smaller than that envisaged in 2007, but still considerably larger than the present Chinese Embassy in St Julian's.