Last update - 00:00 07/05/2007
Knesset committee to discuss planned T.A. luxury tower project
By Yigal Hai, Haaretz Correspondent
The Knesset Interior and Environment Committee decided Wednesday to discuss A Tel Aviv Municipality plans for 11 building projects that will include 1,800 housing units will be reviewed and debated by the Knesset Interior and Environment Comm ittee, the Knesset plenum decided in a vote on Wednesday.
"Now the committee can convince the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Environment to utilize all of the tools at their disposal, including the judiciary and governmental ones, in order to abort these plans," said Wednesday MK Ran Cohen, who initiated the Knesset plenum session in the wake of a Haaretz article about the construction plans.
Tel Aviv residents might be separated from the beachfront permanently, if the plans by the Tel Aviv Municipality come to fruition. Contradicting its own bylaw passed in 1983, which prohibits beachfront construction, over the past few years City Hall has been promoting 11 projects to build 1,800housing units in those very areas.
Tel Aviv, which was built with its back to the sea, will find itself having to give up one of its most valuable assets to private developers who will sell to those who can afford the location, including its view and the refreshing sea breeze.
Construction is planned mainly in the last open lots along the beach or replacing older structures.
The demand for residential dwellings represents a new trend in an area where mostly hotels were built in the past. Five of the 11 projects have received final approval by the city's planning institutions and the Interior Ministry; the remaining six are in the final stages of approval. The plans have all been promoted over the past six years, during which Ron Huldai has been Tel Aviv's mayor.
Three years ago, the city's sub-committee on planning and construction, which consists of 11 members of the city council, published an official policy statement supporting the projects.
Most of the plans call for the construction of luxury apartment towers abutting the Herbert Samuel Promenade just dozens of meters from the waterline along central Tel Aviv's beachfront. The projects will extend from the Tel Aviv Port in the northern part of the city to the Manshiyeh area just north of Jaffa. Some of the construction is of mixed use - half hotel rooms and half dwellings.
The 1983 bylaw, based on National Master Plan 13, allowed construction for hotels and recreation purposes only along most of Tel Aviv's central beach, to ensure public access to the beach. So far the Interior Ministry has approved the projects by granting exemptions from the requirements of the master plan. Planning boards at the district (municipal and national) level see eye-to-eye on the five projects and have all given their blessing to them, providing the various authorizations to promote a good many of the projects in question.
The city is even working with the Interior Ministry on approving an amendment to the master plan to allow for the construction, by means of a process that does not allow the public to voice its objections. If the amendment is approved, developers will not need to ask for exemptions for the construction of residences in the area in question.
The city itself is the developer of the project on the Yarkon peninsula which foresees the construction of 400 housing units in 16-story towers in the area of the Tel Aviv Port.
The area around the Opera Tower will also undergo changes. To its north, two 25-story towers are planned, one for residences and one hotel. To the south, a 27-story tower will incorporate residences and hotels.
The Union for Environmental Defense (UED) says the plans will change the character of the area from public (hotels and restaurants) to private. Yael Dori, responsible for construction issues at the UED, says the projects do an injustice to the city's residents, because "the buildings are planned only for the rich, for those who can buy this kind of vacation flat on Tel Aviv's beach, in the heart of the most expensive area in the country." According to Dori, "That's how this area is slowly being acquired by the upper hundredth percentile."
Dori says the construction of so many private dwellings near the beach in one of the city's last open public areas, which at the same time is one of its liveliest, is a "social mistake." She believes the city will suffer from the loss of the area to residents and visitors and bemoans what she calls an "unsuccessful mixed-use of an area whose function in the future is uncertain."
Dori says even the construction of hotels along the beachfront was a compromise intended to leave the public as much as possible of the area. However, "the building of residences in the same way creates a physical and psychological barrier between the public in the city and its beach."
The Tel Aviv branch of the Israel Society for the Protection of Nature said, "The beach front should be developed in a controlled manner emphasizing the possibility of a sea view, the breeze and the prevention of a massive wall-like front. Most of the developed urban front now blocks the public's right to enjoy, view and access the beach. The unwise addition of tall towers along narrow streets will make the situation worse. The beach is the city's greatest natural and leisure asset, and therefore it is important to carefully protect the principle of balanced development."