Controversial Qajjenza permit for 200 flats and elderly home set to be approved

Paul Attard, a prominent developer and secretary general of the Malta Developers Association (MDA), is expected to receive the controversial permit to convert part of the former LPG bottling facility in Qajjenza.

The project plans to include three large blocks: two designated for residential flats and the third for a new elderly care home.

Attard’s controversial project is slated for approval this week before the Planning Board, following a series of piecemeal changes to the locality’s planning configurations.

These changes will allow him to build up to seven storeys in height, significantly more than permitted initially in the local plan.

Originally, Attard had much larger plans than the current proposals.

He was informally working to take control of approximately two-thirds of the former LPG site – public land given to Enemalta. With the consensus of the authorities, he had even submitted plans to transform the entire area into large blocks of apartments and commercial buildings along the seafront.

After The Shift revealed this plan, there was public outcry in Birżebbuġa, a strong Labour-supporting locality. As a result, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli, who is elected from that constituency, abandoned the plans to commercialise the area, and Attard’s initial intentions fell through.

According to his reviewed plans, now set for approval, Attard will develop a third of the decommissioned plant on an 8,000 square metre plot acquired from private landlords (who still owned part of the area) through a promise of sale for €12 million. Attard financed this acquisition through public bonds.

On it, he is slated to build three massive blocks: one to serve as a 240-bed residential home for the elderly and approximately 200 new apartments in two other blocks, each rising to a height of seven floors. Two underground floors will house some 236 parking spaces.

Objections were raised even on this new proposal, with Din l-Art Ħelwa and Graffitti objecting to the height of the old people’s home, which, according to them, goes even higher than the exceptions made by the Planning Authority to allow Attard to build higher than the limits of the local plans.

The Planning Authority’s case officer handling this project dismissed their claims, insisting that the height should be calculated from the highest ground point of the plot, which suits Attard’s requirements.

Visual photomontages of the project indicate that the new multi-million-euro project will have a significant adverse visual impact on the area.

For some unknown reason, the Labour-dominated local council of Birżebbuġa did not even take part in the Planning Authority’s consultation process, let alone object.

If approved, this would be the third home for the elderly built by Attard, now operating under the name Plan Group, while still holding a third of the GAP construction group, which is associated with Sliema’s Fort Cambridge among other massive development projects.

His two other old people’s homes, in Għargħur and Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, are funded by the government, through direct orders that run into millions in bed leasing to the government.