Israel Land Authority (ILA) and the National Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas will go ahead with their plan in southern Tel Hashomer. Simultaneously, the Ramat Gan municipality and ILA will submit a plan for increasing the space allocated in the plan for public buildings, the High Court of Justice ruled in a hearing of an appeal filed by the state institutions against the District Court's ruling striking down planning agreement between the various agencies, after the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas did not agree to make planning deals.
The plan concerns an area called "Compound 5," consisting of 558 dunam (139.5 acres) north of Highway 461 south of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and west of Motta Gur Road. The plan provides for construction of 3,050 apartments, 67 dunam (16.75 acres) for public buildings, a reserve of 23 dunam (5.75 acres), 104 dunam (26 acres) of open space, and 360,00 square meters of business and commercial space. The residential and business areas are planned along Highway 461.
A petition filed last year by the Kfar Azar Cooperative Society asserted that the plan would result in the loss of its agricultural land. It was argued that the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas and ILA had surrendered to the demands of the Ramat Gan municipality by illegally adding public and business space in order to solve planning problems in Ramat Gan, instead of serving the housing units in the plan, as required by the National Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas Law.
The Ramat Gan municipality also petitioned against the plan, making an argument diametrically opposed to that of Kfar Azar. The municipality alleged that the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas had promised it that under the plan, 100 dunam (25 acres) would be allocated for public uses. The petition asserts that the plan allocates only 64 dunam (16 acres) for public space.
Judge Hagai Brenner, who heard these petitions in the Tel Aviv District Court, noticed that some of the processes included in the plan deviated from legal principles. "It appears that the respondents and developers of the plan (Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas, ILA, and the Planning Administration, A.M.), under active pressure from the municipality, tried to squeeze blood from a stone in breach of their legal mandate," Brenner wrote in his ruling.
He further stated that as a planning body, the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas should avoid covert agreements with other authorities. "The Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas is obligated to refrain completely from preliminary agreements concerning the plans it is supposed to discuss and decide on the basis of an orderly, public, and transparent procedure," Brenner wrote in his ruling.
The Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas, its subcommittee for objections, the housing cabinet, the Ministry of Finance housing administration, and ILA appealed the ruling. A High Court of Justice panel consisting of Justice Noam Sohlberg, Justice George Karra, and Justice Yosef Elron heard the appeal.
The High Court of Justice refrained from discussing the substance of Brenner's rulings on the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas' behavior, addressing instead the agreements between the state authorities and the Ramat Gan municipality. The parties eventually agreed that the Ramat Gan municipality and ILA would submit a plan for increasing the volume of construction in the public space in accordance with the principles of the municipality's plan for public buildings, but apparently in the framework of a new plan, not that of the Committee for Planning Priority Housing Areas. This will allow the plan devised by the appellants to go forward.
The parties agreed, with the High Court of Justice's approval, that the District Court's ruling would be nullified.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 27, 2019
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