Tel Aviv residential building plans have been left in disarray by Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality’s decision not to extend the TAMA 38 project, by which existing buildings are strengthened and enlarged to protect against earthquakes. A range of projects that have been promoted over recent months will be halted and tenants will have to reconsider their options. TAMA 38 projects will not be approved from the end of next month, if the Tel Aviv Planning and Building Committee approves the decision not to submit an alternative plan next week.
The TAMA 38 national outline plan for strengthening existing buildings against earthquakes will officially end, throughout the country, on August 29. Municipalities that requested to prepare a replacement plan for TAMA 38, according to their rules and definitions, received approval for this, and TAMA 38 was extended in their areas until May 2026. The condition for this was that they must submit the replacement plan to the planning institutions by August 1.
Over recent months there have been reports that Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality does not intend to submit its own replacement plan by the specified date, even though in June 2023 it recommended approving such a plan for deposit in the Tel Aviv District Planning and Building Committee, "subject to the completion of documents." Since then, in practice, the plan has not progressed towards its official submission.
Now, it turns out, the Municipality has no intention of submitting it by the required date. City engineer Udi Carmeli recommends stating at the upcoming meeting that TA 5555 will not be submitted before August 1, and consequently TAMA 38 in Tel Aviv will end on August 29.
"Abandoning apartment owners"
The document on the committee's agenda next week states that "TAMA 38 has proven throughout its 19 years of application that it did not fulfill its purpose in the places where it was most needed. Although TAMA 38 permits were issued in the city, it is not necessarily an efficient track, which is an understatement. It is a track that does not even provide the market with certainty."
Later in the document are the reasons why TA 5555, the replacement plan for TAMA 38, was not submitted on time: "Due to the Sword of Iron War, with all its implications, and the local authority elections that also 'contributed' to the delay, especially with regard to holding a public participation procedure, the procedure for preparing the program documents has not yet been completed. The plan is expected to be submitted to the district committee towards the end of 2024, and in September 2024 a public participation procedure for the plan is expected to begin."
However, other municipalities did manage to promote replacement plans in their cities during this period. Ramat Gan Municipality submitted its plan to the district committee over the past few days, and Ramla Municipality has already completed the entire approval process for its replacement plan.
As a result tenants who have begun promoting TAMA 38 plans for their buildings will be back to square one, and will have to promote renewal of their building in other ways, or wait for the municipality to complete the approval of its replacement plan, a procedure that will take months, in the best-case scenario.
Market sources believe there are dozens of such projects that will be affected, if not hundreds. Adv. Dan Halpert, who specializes in supporting tenants implementing TAMA 38 projects says there are projects in which, "We stopped minutes before submitting the application for the permit because we realized that we had run out of time. This means that the project has gone down the drain, after a protracted period of effort, months of commercial and legal negotiations and the preparation of agreements and discussions and meetings and conferences."
Adv. Ishai Itsikovich, partner and head of the real estate department at Agmon with Tulchinsky law firm adds, "The recommendation of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality engineer is driven by purely financial considerations, without any consideration or balancing with other weighty considerations, including the personal safety of the city's residents.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 25, 2024.
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