Manoel Island activists invite Maltese public to design their dream park in historic fortress
**Manoel Island activists to hold public workshops on what park could look like**
*Grass-roots coalition invites citizens to draw, debate and dream about a car-free, biodiverse public park on the 350-year-old fortress island.*
A citizens’ campaign that has already forced two revisions of a controversial Manoel Island development master-plan is now turning sketches into strategy. Starting next Saturday, the “Merrna għal Manoel” coalition will host a fortnight of open-air drawing boards, kids’ Lego sessions and evening round-tables asking one simple question: “If this island belongs to all of us, what should it feel like when we step off the boat?”
The workshops – held inside the dilapidated Lazzaretto vaults kindly cleared by MIDI plc, the island’s concessionaire – come after protesters last summer blocked contractors from pouring concrete on the last stretch of public shoreline. That cliff-hanger moment, live-streamed from mobile phones, convinced Environment Minister Miriam Dalli to freeze permits and commission a new social-impact study. MIDI has since agreed to “pause heavy works” until the report is delivered in October, giving activists a narrow window to prove there is an alternative, lighter vision that still pays the bills.
“Malta doesn’t need another shopping boulevard pretending to be a piazza,” says architect and founding member Sasha Borg, unfolding a hand-drawn map that replaces multi-storey car parks with salt-marsh boardwalks, urban gardens and a swimmable creek. “We want people who usually only sign petitions to pick up chalk and show us where they would picnic, where their nanna can sit in shade, where a school kid can safely cycle.”
**From quarantine hospital to film set – and back to the people**
For three centuries Manoel Island served as a quarantine station whose yellow-plastered hospital wards once echoed with cholera patients; British servicemen later added Art-Nouveau balconies and a tiny chapel dedicated to St Francis. The site’s layered history is still visible in limestone scars left by 1942 Luftwaffe bombs, graffiti by evacuated Libyan refugees temporarily housed here in 2011, and the 18th-century star fort whose ramparts star in Game of Thrones re-runs every Sunday night.
Yet under a 2003 concession, MIDI – a joint venture between the Tumas Group and the Church’s property arm – gained rights to transform the 274,000-sqm island into a “mixed-use marina village” of 600 apartments, a 400-bed hotel and 15,000 sqm of retail. Only 60,000 sqm were earmarked for open space, much of it yacht hard-standing. After public outcry, a 2019 revision trimmed residential units but still earmarked 2,300 underground car spaces, prompting the new campaign.
**“We’re not against investment; we’re against privatisation of breeze.”**
That slogan, splashed across T-shirts sold outside Valletta’s Saturday market, captures the emotional nerve the issue touches. In a country where 92 % of the coastline is built up, Manoel Island’s western shore is one of the last places where a Sliema family can still push a stroller across untarmacked sand at sunset. Losing that, Borg argues, would sever an intangible link between city and sea that Maltese poetry has celebrated since Dun Karm.
The coalition’s proposal keeps MIDI’s yacht slips – and their lucrative revenue – but moves parking to a single semi-subterranean hub on the Gżira side, freeing 40 % more surface area for endemic planting and food kiosks housed in restored military storehouses. Precedent exists: the 2015 conversion of Fort St Elmo returned a profit while adding 50,000 sqm of public realm; Tigné Point itself, MIDI’s first phase, now commands record rents precisely because the adjacent coastline was cleaned and opened.
**What happens next?**
Workshop outputs will be digitised by University of Malta planning students and submitted to the social-impact consultants, who are legally obliged to consider “credible community alternatives”. MIDI spokesperson Karl Gouder says the company welcomes “constructive input” and has pledged €50,000 toward whichever concept wins the most citizen votes on an online portal launching after the final session.
But activists warn enthusiasm must translate into turnout. “If 200 people show up we’ll be dismissed as the usual NGOs,” admits Borg. “If 2,000 come, politicians will realise every grandmother in Gżira is watching.”
The first workshop runs 10:00-16:00 on 8 July inside the Lazzaretto; bring sunblock, closed shoes and, organisers insist, “your childhood memories of what this island smelled like before the diesel generators”.
