Watch: Aggrieved Mosta Shop Owner – ‘Stop Removing Parking Or People Won’t Visit’
Mosta’s piazza pedestrianisation project is in the spotlight but a business owner has now voiced a different concern beyond the felling of central trees.
Edwin Vassallo, a former Mosta mayor and PN MP who owns the Best & Less Clothing store, warned that people are unlikely to visit the new piazza unless new parking spaces are set up.
“Beautifying village centres is a good thing but stop ruining parking spaces,” Vassallo said in an interview with Lovin Malta.
“Parking is a real problem. People nowadays spend their free time at business locations that allow them to park. If there’s no parking there’s no life and people simply won’t go there.”
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“It’s not just because it’s Mosta – it could have been Ħamrun, Mellieħa or anywhere. Arrange and beautify as much as you want but make sure you keep necessary commodities, which include parking facilities and spaces.”
“You might want Mosta to be pedestrianised but unless there’s parking nearby, no one will come – they won’t even walk down from Santa Margherita. Instead, they’ll head to a commercial centre a few steps away (ie. PAMA) where they can park underneath the cafeteria, have a coffee, do their shopping and leave.”
Vassallo warned that the Mosta local council’s greatest challenge isn’t to complete this project but to encourage people to return to the town after three years of constant roadworks and ever-changing traffic diversions.
“Mosta is currently a dead centre,” he said. “How will we resuscitate it and turn it into a business location again? How will we breathe life into the piazza and encourage people to visit?”
“How will we make it comfortable for residents to enter and leave? How will we make it comfortable for people to visit a business without the fear of not knowing when and how they will be able to leave the town?”
Do you think Mosta needs more parking spaces?
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