You sabotage mine and I'll sabotage yours

Scroll a little further down, and you’ll find my post about how Paul Cardona, chairman of Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar, had applied for planning permission for the redevelopment of Dock No. 1.

Right. Now let’s put things into perspective. Mr Cardona applied for this mammoth project on behalf of an organisation called Romegas. This was two years ago. Over the past two years, Astrid Vella and Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar maintained a deafening silence on Dock No. 1.

Yesterday, Paul Cardona had a letter published in The Sunday Times, accusing that newspaper of bias. Among many other things, he wrote:

The editor should have known that the FAA has not objected to a great number of major projects. To give just five recent examples: it did not object to the Mellieha Holiday Complex expansion due to the hotel’s good track record in environmental care. The FAA did not object to the Metropolis or Savoy Gardens projects due to their strong element of regeneration of depressed areas. Similarly we have not objected to major structural works to scheduled buildings like the Art Nouveau building facing Independence Gardens in Sliema, as these will ensure its rehabilitation after years of abandonment. These and the Freeport extension are only a few of the projects we have not objected to, which proves that the claim that the FAA objects to any project is just another attempt to inhibit us from objecting on important issues.

You will notice that he does not mention the redevelopment of Dock No. 1 as a major project to which FAA did not object.

While Astrid Vella and FAA played dumb and said nothing about their chairman’s pet project – lots of people thought it was odd, but no one made the connection – Din L-Art Helwa spoke about it. This is from Malta Today (Sunday, 22 July 2007), quoting the national trust’s president, Martin Galea:

Plans presented to the Malta Environment & Planning Authority for the proposed Dock No. 1 project will include the development of two additional floors over the existing knights’ barracks and a six-storey landmark building. The news has attracted concern from heritage trust Din L-Art Helwa, whose president Martin Galea expressed worry over the impact that the two “very large modern structures” will have: “We must assess the impact landmark buildings will have on the view from the bastions.”

The six-storey building will include five floors of apartments, adjacent to the knights’ barracks. Also included is an imposing five-storey high gateway block, planned for Gavino Gulia Square, in Cospicua. Galea, however, is not against the two additional storeys on the knights’ barracks and appreciates that the new plans represent an improvement on the scale of development envisaged in the development brief.

“We recognise that the developers have tried to work with some interesting architecture and not to overdevelop existing buildings,” Galea said, who added that Din L-Art Helwa appreciates the need for private investment in the area. “We understand that in order to attract investment in the regeneration of this area, private investment, which leaves a return, is invaluable.” Since the application is still in its outline phase, Din L-Art Helwa said it sees room for improvements that will ensure the development respects its august surroundings. “We are not against the use of stylish modern architecture, but this must sit well in the original surroundings.”

The application was made and discussions on the Dock No. 1 project took place when Jesmond Mugliett was the minister responsible. Then fate intervened in the form of a general election. We don’t know quite what happened after that – Paul Cardona might wish to write a letter to a newspaper and let us know – but on 15 January, Austin Gatt (now the minister responsible for public projects of this nature) announced in parliament that the Ta’ Qali Crafts Village plans had been scrapped because funds could not be sourced from the European Union. Dock No. 1, he said, would be turned into an arts and crafts destination instead.

So what of the regeneration project for which the FAA chairman had been the named applicant? Austin Gatt said in parliament that the investors who had shown interest in Dock 1 had been told some time before that “for various reasons, the redevelopment as proposed by them is no longer desired.”

It may be a complete coincidence that Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar’s campaign against the St John’s museum project took on a whole new ferocious bent, aimed at sabotaging it before it reached the planning stage, at more or less the same time the plug was pulled on Paul Cardona’s application, on behalf of Romegas, for the redevelopment of Dock No. 1. Or it may not be. Whatever. I somehow don’t think that Paul Cardona would have been bending over backwards to sabotage the cathedral museum project, while his foot-soldier Astrid slated MEPA and poured scorn over planning procedures, if he still had an application pending for the development of Dock No. 1. But of course, I may be wrong. Maybe his determination to sabotage the museum project at all costs had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the response to the Dock No. 1 project was “thanks, but no thanks.”

Like I said earlier, in Malta it’s not so much a case of cherchez la femme, but fittex u ssib is-sors tal-hdura. What an island. I mean, really.