When was Joseph Muscat planning on telling us about this?

While Joseph Muscat and his henchmen are bouncing off walls in their eagerness to convince us of the full horror of what “Giovanna’s husband” has done, parading their corrupt ‘whistleblower’ around as though he is somehow a victim and not the actual perpetrator, we discover that they have been concealing a big secret that far eclipses anything “Giovanna’s husband” might have done with Gauci ta’ Gharb.

We know that the government has been keen to keep it secret because we discovered the news not from the government but from the website of an international firm of architects, Chapman Taylor, which published the details and images on its website. Somebody noticed them and informed the press.

The images uploaded here are taken from the Chapman Taylor site as is the press release below.

Chapman Taylor has now said that its publication of the news was “a big mistake” and that the project is still at the government adjudication stage.

That is neither here nor there, because the government obviously has only one proposal before it: that of the Kalamarine Development Consortium. Six companies collected tender documents when the government issued an international call for expressions of interest – for the building and operation of a cruise liner terminal and yacht marina in Gozo – back in June 2013. But only one submitted a proposal.

You have to laugh, of course – though it’s a cynical laugh. Back in 2002, when the owner of another quarry just a short way away from this one proposed a small yacht marina with some real-estate development landscaped and concealed within the quarry itself, all hell broke loose.

Harry Vassallo, then AD chairman and later handpicked for his Brussels office by Malta’s most corrupt politician of all time, John Dalli, went berserk at the public hearing. The parish priest of Qala preached against the plans from his pulpit, talking about topless people running around.

A village referendum was held, which voted against the plans. People were told that they wouldn’t be allowed to use Hondoq beach anymore.

Petitions were organised and circulated among the chattering classes in Malta. People went nuts. The Labour Party played into it, even though the project had nothing to do with the government and was 100% private.

And now look – because the democratic process blocked, a decade ago, a minimal yacht marina and homes in one quarry, the undemocratic process under this government has led to a project being imposed in another quarry close by, that is a nightmare the opponents of the original project could not even have imagined: a vast cruise liner terminal, cruise liners moored there, thousands of tourists pouring off and creating chaos, a big yacht marina and spreading building and areas of concrete imposed on the natural surroundings rather than integrated with them.

It’s horrendous.

Because the Labour government remembers what the proponents of the original project went through, it is going to have none of that democratic nonsense and will bulldoze things through instead. No way is it going to have its project scuppered by anything as annoying as public hearings and public opposition.

The beaches, the water quality and thousands of people pouring in don’t matter anymore and the parish priest of Qala no longer bothers about the corruption from topless people and other foreigners. You have to wonder about this crazy country.

NEWS

Leisure: Milan studio to design inventive cruise and leisure complex cut into Malta’s coastline

Published on 26/05/2015

Chapman Taylor in Milan has been chosen to design an innovative mixed-use project set within a former limestone quarry at Malta’s Eastern most point, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Fourteen entries were shortlisted in the international competition to design a new resort and cruise terminal along this dramatic piece of coastline in Gozo and it was Chapman Taylor’s resourceful proposal that beat the competition.

The scheme comprises of a new cruise terminal building and contemporary yacht marina, residential apartments, villas, luxury hotel and retail and leisure facilities all with panoramic views of the sea. Chapman Taylor’s Milan team meticulously designed the new development to blend into the Mediterranean landscape, carefully manipulating the roughness of the coastline overhanging the site. The land was previously occupied by an old quarry, which meant a complex and challenging task for the architects to deliver a contemporary design that still retains the delicate and harsh beauty of the surroundings.

The new marina will be excavated and settled in a limestone cove eroded by both nature and man, the apartments will emerge from the cliffs and their facades built from the same rock, the villas within their terraced green gardens will cascade down to the sea following the natural slope of the headland. Essentially, the rock itself has enforced the architecture and acts as the most important construction material that the buildings are merged into.