The neighborhood has a say

A few months ago, a representative of the international luxury hotel chain Four Seasons was summoned to a meeting in Jerusalem about the project the company was planning in the city's German Colony. The company's representative and the project's architects did not go to the mayor's office nor did they participate in a professional discussion in the planning committees. Instead they wanted to meet with representatives of the residents of the Jerusalem neighborhood to persuade them how worthwhile it would be to build the hotel there.

About two weeks ago, Bill Gates, Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal and Jewish tycoon Isidore Sharp paid $3.8 billion to acquire the Four Seasons chain, which operates 74 luxury hotels in 31 countries,( excluding Israel), and which has been trying for years to set up a small hotel in the German Colony. These figures, however, made no impression on the neighborhood residents' committee.

"The representatives explained how much their project would contribute to the country, and how grateful we should be that a hotel chain of that magnitude is prepared to get a foothold in the Middle East," said architect Ehud Halevy, one of the committee's members. "Since they had nothing to say beyond that, nothing came of it. Our struggle is continuing," he stressed.

The residents have begun an aggressive public and media campaign , collected money and taken on the services of a public relations firm. Their efforts have borne fruit - they have succeeded in delaying the implementation of the plan and have forced the developers to make changes.

Over the past two years, against the backdrop of vagueness about the planning stages and the weakness of the authorities and committees in the face of the powerful developers, a new power center has developed in the real estate branch: neighborhood committees. These committees volunteer to try and change planning policy, to foil harmful plans or to ensure the rights of those living in the neighborhood.

The neighborhood committees are aware of the limitations of their power, work on a volunteer basis and for the most part pay for their struggle out of their own pockets - but they remain convinced about their ability to defend their quality of life. The following are some examples of the activities of such committees:

The German Colony - an example worth copying

The residents' committee in the German Colony has been operating at one level or another for the past 15-20 years, since the time when the municipality began drawing up the plans for roads in the Omariya complex in that area. A group of five to seven residents from among the hundreds of wealthy inhabitants of the neighborhood got together and volunteered to do something; this year they received public recognition for their much publicized struggle against the plan to establish hotels in their neighborhood.

The drive began with a meeting attended by some 100 residents of the neighborhood. The communal authority recognized that this was an unusual turnout and began granting logistical support to the committee. The committee succeeded in enlisting the support of some of the celebrities living in the neighborhood (Professor Ariel Hirschfeld and Professor Reuven Gronau) as well as public organizations with status (the Bemakom organization, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the Architects' Association) and even managed to raise funds from some of the wealthier residents (most of them religious Jews from America - $2,000-$5,000 per donation) with the aim of preserving the tranquil nature of the neighborhood.

With the backing of all these, the residents started their public campaign, which included advertisements in newspapers, posters in the streets and an Internet site. As the decisive debates in the planning committees approached, they even took on the services of a PR office. In the struggle against the building of the Four Seasons Hotel, the residents were only partially successful. The plan will be approved with relatively minor changes. At the same time, their struggle made a strong impression.

"I believe the developers understand that it is worth their while to soften the opposition in advance," Halevy said. But he immediately backtracked: "I am not so naive and perhaps the whole thing was a fiction. We certainly feel like they put up a good show in the district [committee] but in the background, it is always possible for the developers to go to come cabinet minister and close a deal."

At the same time, if there is some justification to what Halevy says about the success of the struggle, it is precisely in the impression that the struggle left, and which had an effect also on Kfar Sava.

The residents of Hameyasdim Street in Kfar Sava woke up one morning a few months ago, to find that a building plan had been approved that included vacating part of the old marketplace compound in the city. Instead of the parks and gardens around the compound, the municipality planned to set up seven office buildings, with commercial space, and underground parking for 400 vehicles.

The amazed residents, who already suffer from extreme transportation difficulties, realized their lives would now become hell, and decided to take action.

"I learned from an article in a newspaper that there was a plan underway that would lead to catastrophe, and that we had missed the opportunity to oppose it," said one of the residents, Yehudit Hefetz. "I therefore wrote a response on the local Internet site and asked if anyone could help in the struggle. Another resident, Mark Boaz, responded and we set up an actions committee."

Hefetz and Boaz wrote letters to the municipality, the district committee , the ministers of interior and transportation and gave interviews to the local press and radio. They collected signatures from 60 residents of the neighborhood and approached well-known committees in the city to join them in their struggle.

"We don't know exactly what to do, we don't understand about planning policy and assume we'll have to take a lawyer; we realize we may already have missed the train," admitted Hefetz. But she added: "I believe in public struggles and wouldn't be doing this if I didn't. It is not possible that people should not have the basic right to express opposition. They proved this was possible in Jerusalem's German Colony, and it is just a matter of getting people together. I'm not na?ve but when the elections come round, our votes will also count."

Some 12,000 housing units have been populated in the Kiryat Hasharon quarter in the eastern part of Netanya in the past few years. It did not take long for the residents to realize that the pace of building in the neighborhood was far outstripping the pace of development and the creation of infrastructure.

"About two years ago, one of the residents of the neighborhood distributed flyers in the local mailboxes in which he detailed the mistakes that had been made in planning the neighborhood," said Nissim Shavit, one of the members of the neighborhood committee. "People approached him and began getting organized and within a short time there was a group of seven people who are now dealing with all aspects of life in the neighborhood: problems of development and transportation, quality of the environment, opposition to continued large-scale building and hasty development without suitable infrastructure, open public spaces, and educational facilities."

Every member of the committee took on one aspect of the problem - education or planning or transportation, for example. One of the members set up an Internet site that explains the committee's activities and sends out notices to the residents (ksharon.com). At first, Shavit said, it was not easy. "In the beginning, we were an anonymous body that no one knew about. We were not elected by the residents or appointed by the municipality; instead we entered the vacuum and took over to further the interests of the residents. One of the first things we did was to initiate a meeting with Mayor Miriam Feinberg and then with all the top officials in the municipality. In the beginning, we discussed the overall issues but as time went by, we dealt with more specific problems, and we began a struggle when we felt we were not getting good enough answers."

One of the better known struggles that Shavit is talking about is the intention of the municipality to allow the continuation of the Ayalon Freeway along the railway line that interfaces with the neighborhood. As part of their struggle on this point, the committee members approached the planning authority and also appeared before the national infrastructures committee, and succeeded in bringing about a renewed approach to the project (with changes in the route and tunneling).

"We were successful in informing the planning authority that there is a neighborhood here whose residents would be affected if the plan was approved. They had not even been aware of this," said Shavit.

Two years after the committee was formed, its members are still voluntarily continuing their activities and paying the costs out of their own pockets. They listen to the complaints of the residents, meet with the developers, are in direct and close contact with municipal officials (and the local newspapers) get assistance from residents of the neighborhood who have professional expertise and run a lively Internet site. A neighborhood meeting organized two months ago by the committee drew some 350-400 residents and turned into an impressive show of force. The committee's success has not gone unnoticed by political activists in the city and both coalition and opposition representatives were quick to attend the gathering. "I assume they consider us to be a political force and many of the residents are hopeful that we will represent them in the municipal council, but we have not yet taken such a decision. It is important, on the one hand, that we be apolitical; otherwise we will lose some of our naivety and the innocence of the positions we represent for the benefit of the neighborhood. On the other hand, we are not ruling that out completely and when the time comes, we'll discuss it," said Shavit.