Government steps in to relocate defiant Valletta suq butcher

The government has this week agreed to relocate the last defiant butcher at the Valletta market, freeing the way for private investors to transform the 150-year-old suq into a high-end food court. 

The owner of P&J Company Limited, who has been serving customers for over 60 years, resisted all offers made by Arkadia Co. Ltd who will be investing €7 million on the redevelopment of the indoor market. 

Negotiations between Arkadia – which already runs four supermarkets – and the market retailers began in May of this year and MaltaToday is informed that each shop was bought out for around €80,000. 

However, P&J Company resisted all offers and the government had to intervene at the eleventh hour to unblock the impasse. The butcher will in the next few weeks be relocated to a government-owned property a few metres away from the market in Merchants Street.

The shops in what had become a quiescent market were on a rolling lease and some of the firms have been operating there for decades. 

Charles Falzon’s family has been serving customers for over 100 years and the Valletta-born and bred butcher is saddened by what he describes as an “end of an era.”

“I’m definitely not happy with having to leave the market where my father and grandfather sold meat for more than 100 years,” Falzon says, surrounded by what remains of the dismantled freezers and fridges in what once was his shop.

Falzon will be opening a new shop in his own property in Zurrieq but he says that the compensation received from Arkadia is nowhere close to what is required for a new butcher shop.

 “Believe me, to open a new shop you need much more than what we were given, especially with the exorbitant costs of the equipment and legal requirements,” Falzon said. 

The original market included 153 stalls, 65 cellars and two underground water cisterns. A wistful Falzon points out that of 10 butchers at the market, only six will remain in the business. 

“It’s the end of an era. What once was a bustling market has become a desolate space which will now become a high-end food court,” he says.

Built in the 1860s, the beautiful colonial structure of the suq is now dirty and dilapidated. Falzon points out that the market suffered from complete neglect by successive administrations, with the last tangible investment made in 1989. 

“In 2002, shop owners had attempted to negotiate a deal which would have seen the market managed by us but the government refused to make any investments to ensure that the market is handed over to the retailers in a decent state, offering instead a paltry yearly sum.” 

Under the new plans, the market’s lower floor will feature several stalls, including a gourmet bakery, a meat shop, a fishmonger, a greengrocer and a supermarket. 

The meat shop was not offered to any of the outgoing shop owners and it is understood that Arkadia are demanding 20% of turnover to rent out the shop. 

The rest of the suq will house restaurants, cafes and bars. According to Arkadia general manager Antoine Portelli, the top floor will serve as a multi-function floor ranging from a cafeteria in the morning to a more cultural and entertainment based space later on during the day. 

“It’s a pity. Markets are the heartbeat of cities and Valletta will be one of the few capitals in Europe to have no real food market,” Falzon said. 

Arkadia were chosen after the government issued an expression of interest last year for the development and restoration of the Victorian structure. 

In 2008 MEPA listed the market as a Grade 1 building and the new project must be completed by 2017, in time for the celebrations marking Valletta’s status as European cultural capital in 2018. 

The market was the first building in Malta to be constructed entirely out of metal and the iron was made at the same foundry which produced the structure used at the celebrated Smithfield meat market, London’s only remaining wholesale market in continuous operation since medieval times.