Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1528159
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 OCTOBER 2024 DESPITE the sweeping changes transforming Malta's entertain- ment hub since the mid-1980s, time seemed to stand still for Villa Rosa and its surroundings along St George's Bay. The Art Nouveau mansion, designed by architect Andrea Vassallo in the 1920s, remained largely untouched, its gardens and the bay below offering a sense of serenity amid the on- going urban development. St George's Barracks, which pre- dated it on the eastern side of the beach, and later, the Corin- thia hotels, were the only struc- tures to rival its presence. It all started to change with the local plans approved in 2006, which split the Villa Ro- sa grounds into nine different zones, four of which were ear- marked for a mix of tourism, residential, and commercial development, with the highest height limitation of seven floors applying to the area next to the Bay Street mall, on St George's Road. Development in this zone was to be terraced and stepped down to two floors in the area adjacent to St George's Bay and the Villa Rosa gardens. Another zone of intensive de- velopment, where commercial development was limited to four floors, was proposed in the area behind Andrew's Bar on the other side of the bay, where a car park was also proposed. While the "upper gardens" around the villa were to be pro- tected, 15 bungalows could be built on another part of the gar- dens near the protected Wied Ħarq Ħamiem. The local plan also decreed that any development carried out in surrounding areas should not compromise the setting of the villa, valley, and the bay. However, it was these chang- es that appreciated the value of the site, which was bound to in- crease interest in the area. Camilleri enters the scene In 2009, the Vic Bon, later Garnet Investments compa- ny owned by Anton Camilleri 'tal-Franċiż', purchased Dol- phin House and the Villa Rosa holiday complex from the Car- diff-based company called C.H. Bailey plc for €32 million and €2.6 million, respectively. Back then, the soft-spoken de- veloper and quarry owner told MaltaToday that the company still had to "sit around the table to decide what to do" with the land they had purchased. He promised that any development on the site "will make the area more beautiful than it is today." However, the Camilleris' in- vestment was not a leap in the dark. The local plan for the area had already paved the way for lucrative developments on the northern and southern flanks of the site. This led to the presentation of a formal planning application in 2014 and approved in 2018, for development foreseen in the local plan together with a four-storey, 56-room hotel at Cresta Quay on the eastern side of the bay. It included Moyni- han House, which lies outside the Villa Rosa grounds, desig- nated as an 'Entertainment Pri- ority Area' – a generic category covering most of Paceville for a mix of dwellings, shops, restau- rants, hostels and hotels. The valley watercourse ar- ea was also earmarked for 15 two-storey villas with private pools. The historical Moynihan and adjacent Dolphin proper- ties were to be demolished and redeveloped into a car park, restaurants, offices, and a lan- guage school, despite the fact that an environmental impact statement unambiguously con- cluded that Moynihan House deserved Grade 2 protection. High rise plans frustrated by masterplan While plodding on with this application, Camilleri was toy- ing with the idea of a high-rise development rising in the cen- tral area of the beach right in front of Villa Rosa. In 2016, MaltaToday re- vealed that Camilleri had presented plans for a 36-sto- rey high-rise designed by the world-renowned Zaha Hadid architectural firm in a devel- opment stretching all the way from Cresta Quay to Moynihan House in a vessel-like creation. Yet subsequently, the Villa Rosa site was not earmarked for high-rise development in the Paceville masterplan drafted by international consultants Mott Macdonald. Instead, the mas- terplan proposed the erection of a 30-storey high-rise on the Cresta Quay site. The logic for locating the View of Villa Rosa in 1940s Undated postcard of Villa Rosa