Tall & Urban News

Proposed Hotel Tower in Sliema Shrinks In Height

The original tower will be scaled down to 123 meters, and despite the COVID-19 crisis in Malta, the public is still being expected to send its feedback.
The original tower will be scaled down to 123 meters, and despite the COVID-19 crisis in Malta, the public is still being expected to send its feedback.
31 March 2020 | Sliema, Malta

The developers of the 40-story Fort Cambridge Tower on the former Fort Cambridge site in Tigné Point, Sliema, have presented new plans that scale down the hotel by 11 meters.

Fort Cambridge developers GAP Ltd presented plans for a 31-story hotel which still envisions the removal of a sizeable part of the historic barracks. The application is still awaiting a decision by the Planning Authority (PA) as to whether these barracks should be granted protection or not.

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The original tower will be scaled down to 123 meters, and despite the COVID-19 crisis in Malta, the public is still being expected to send its feedback on the development until the deadline of 8 May 2020.

The change in height reflects the removal of the hotel’s conference facilities, which gave way to an increase in rooms from 368 to 375.

The design was also changed from a stepped pyramidical structure to a rectangular pencil development rising above the city’s skyline, complementing the 28-story Townsquare Tower near Villa Drago.

The height reduction was widely anticipated following the revocation of Townsquare’s original 38-story application in 2019.

Yet one major obstacle for the development is that the policy permitting high-rise hotels specifically bans such developments on scheduled historical buildings.

The PA still must decide on a request to schedule the building by the Sliema Local council. The building’s historical importance was recognized in studies included in the Environment Impact Assessment which recommended Grade 2 scheduling for the buildings, a status which normally precludes substantial changes.

Photomontages for the new development suggest that most of the original barracks will be demolished with only parts of the façade being retained.

The Fort Cambridge officers’ mess was built between 1903 and 1905. The building was designed according to the standard officers’ mess designs that were used during this period. In 1915 the building was used as a military hospital during World War I.

Because the site of the proposed tower hotel amounts to 2,508 square meters, 1,770 of which will be built up, the development cannot be approved under the Floor Area Ratio policy. That policy only allows higher buildings on 4,000-square-meter sites surrounded by streets on all sides, of which half must be retained as open space.

The project’s EIA consultants claim the decrease in floors will reduce anticipated traffic generation and the resultant noise and air pollution levels due to a reduction of conferences, meetings, and conventions that would have been organized in the hotel.

The 2007 development brief for the land on which Fort Cambridge was leased to GAP Ltd for €54 million (US$59 million), had excluded development on the historic barracks. But the brief itself is legally not mentioned in the deed signed with Gap Holdings in 2007. In 2016, former parliamentary secretary for lands, Deborah Schembri, confirmed that since the 2007 deed does not take into account the development brief that guided Gap Holdings, the Government Property Division “has to honor the original deed.” That would imply that no renegotiation of the lease price or any changes are being considered.

For more on this story, go to Malta Today.