Watch: White Rocks complex 'will not be overbuilt’

White Rocks Development Co. is expected to sign an agreement with the government for a €400 million development in Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq shortly. For Alpine chairman Tony Zahra there is a sense of déjà vu: he formed part of the consortium that won the 1999 bid for the site. He tells Vanessa Macdonald why he never gave up. What actually happened to the 1999 bid? We had a vision for a tourism development and asked for a small number of residential units to create a mixed-use facility. An article consortium partner Paul Abela wrote in 2010 gave a step in-between: he wrote you had agreed with then tourism minister Michael Refalo on the main aspects of the project, but when Francis Zammit Dimech took on that post he did not recognise the agreement. He was accused of changing the goalposts… That is when you asked for the real estate, no? It has been a number of years and I would prefer to talk about our present project… The previous project had difficulties when there was a change of minister. But why not leave that case closed instead of reopening it? Perhaps the place is jinxed. There was then Clyde Puli proposing a sports village, which also ended up without resolution. It is not jinxed...