Strait Street’s lower end to get a makeover

Their heyday may be long gone, their doors shuttered and their old signs gathering dust over the decades, but nine bars and restaurants in the unfashionable end of Strait Street will soon be given a new lease of life. ‘The Gut’, a new project by Valletta real estate company VBL, is planning to transform the largely derelict lower stretch of the former Red Light district into a place of fine dining, cocktails and live music. Watering holes that over the years have taken on the quality of myth – Silver Horse Bar, Blue Peter, New York, Kennedy, Mae West – will be revived and reopened, each with a unique concept including tea house, ice cream parlour and champagne and oyster lounge. The company behind the ambitious overhaul has already acquired the side-by-side properties and started construction works as it seeks tenants to operate the final few establishments. If all goes according to plan, the first phase of the project could be up and running by next summer, and the whole development operational in two or three years. “I’m from Valletta – and the company invests solely in Valletta – so we wanted to keep the originality of our city,” Keith Vassallo from VBL told The Sunday Times...