Hotel And New Road Part Of Planning Application For 31-Storey Tower On Site Of Gżira Showroom

A 31-storey tower proposed on the site of Gżira’s iconic Muscat Motors showroom would include a hotel, offices, residential units, and even a new road and plaza, a freshly presented planning application details.

The application (4284/26), which was presented by Mizzi Estate Limited, sees the large 4,500 square metre site being divided into three areas. While over half of the plot (the area behind the showroom) has been designated for high-rise development, the current showroom is set to be retained and rehabilitated. The Muscat Motors showroom, after all, is one of Malta’s few modernist buildings which was actually granted protection.

But the application doesn’t stop there, with the complex’s plans also including an open, landscaped plaza surrounding it all and a new road connecting the busy Triq Rue d’Argens with Triq Luqa Briffa.

If approved and eventually constructed, this new 31-storey tower would join the nearby 23-storey ST Tower just down the road, the 33-storey Metropolis Tower just across the road (which has been a massive excavation site for nearly two decades but had plans recently revitalised), and the GasanMamo office block in between the two, another building which had been earmarked for development into a 10-storey hotel.

Another site that’s gone through nearly two decades of toing and froing, the Muscat Motors showroom had a previous application submitted all the way back in 2008. This had however been formally withdrawn by the project architects after the case officer recommended refusal due to missing visual and social impact assessments.

What do you make of this latest proposal?

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David Grech Urpani

Lovin Malta's former Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).