MEPA approving Sliema mega-projects in slack property market – SRA

Sliema is inundated with applications for mega-projects that will "trap the already high levels of pollution" in the town, the Sliema Residents Association said.

SRA spokesperson Adrian Gatt said that with the Sliema local council now moribund as it awaits dissolution by presidential decree, there was no sort of local restraint on new projects and that developers are now "grabbing what they can now" with elections looming.

Gatt said another "mega, piecemeal project" loomed on the Gzira end of the Sliema strand, where 120 apartments will go up on the former Forestals site.

"Perit Edwin Mintoff's concept at the Forestals site will close off the last breach in the Sliema bastions. Although the Sliema waterfront is subject to an 8-floor height 'limitation', the developers do not disguise their intention to rise directly around 100 feet from the roadside - achieving 11 floors with an extended semi-basement and mezzanine and raising its penthouses to be level with the Sliema police station at the top of Manwel Dimech Street."

Gatt said that if other applications, such as a mega residential development within the Villa Bonici gardens, are approved, the projects will trap already high levels of pollution within the heart of Sliema.

MEPA recently granted permission for the development of three more towers at the MIDI Tigné Point project adding 102 more apartments and 16,000m² of office space.

"The apartment market is slack, yet more apartments, by the hundreds, are still being requested by developers and approved by MEPA in Sliema alone regardless of MEPA's own advice given in the North Harbour Local Plan 2006 stating the already unsustainable situation Sliema was in at the turn of the millenium. This is madness," Gatt said.