German Colony residents fight to keep eatery off their street

While the fate of the Jerusalem Pool is still unclear, Anglos in the capital's German Colony this week mobilized against another planned real estate development they fear would destroy the neighborhood's character and diminish their quality of life.

A local investment company wants to open two restaurants in a building on Emile Zola, a small one-lane residential street off Emek Refaim Street. Neighborhood zoning laws only allow restaurants on its main street, but the owners of the house recently built a small piazza connecting a restaurant on Emek Refaim with the building. The company, Achi Neemanut, has asked the municipality for a special construction license saying the new establishments would be connected to the existing one.

Tzali Reshef, a former Labor MK and Jerusalem lawyer representing Achi Neemanut, told Anglo File his clients are planning to make the entrance from Emek Refaim. "We will do whatever we can to block this area from Emile Zola and to disturb the residents as little as possible," he said.

But Massachusetts native Jerry Goodman, who lives across the street from the building where the two restaurants would be located, says the plans would not only destroy the quiet in one street but set a dangerous precedent signaling that residential areas are no longer off-limits. "Do you want to wake up facing a restaurant and a bar?" he told Anglo File Wednesday during a site visit, referring to rumors that one of the planned establishment would be a bar.

Goodman, 63 says he mobilized "hundreds" of German Colony residents who have since flooded the municipality's department of business registration with countless letters opposing the plans. His initiative, he continued, "started as a one-man crusade" but has since grown to include the local community council and merchants association. One victory of the campaign, said Goodman, was that the municipality agreed to accept protest letters in English rather than insisting they be in English or Hebrew - a feat he called a "precedent-setting success."

City Hall commented that it had received the petition letters and would consider them along with the special building permit request in a meeting of the building and planning committee.

Goodman said that the English-speakers living in the heavily Anglo neighborhood had not been pro-active about changes in their neighborhood, but that he and others are changing that attitude, stressing the current fight to prevent developers from turning the Jerusalem Pool into a residential complex and a battle over a proposed hotel on Emek Refaim. Concerned citizens opposed both projects, which have since been significantly modified. "If one neighbor stands up against something," Goodman said, "other will often stand up as well."