There might be good news for the thousands of landowners in the TA/3700 plan in northwest Tel Aviv with the recent publication by the Tel Aviv Municipality of the revised tables, which divide future construction rights between owners, because planning can progress towards actual construction. The problem is that this stage may entail new procedures that could extend the planning for many more years.
TA/3700 extends over 1,900 dunams (475 acres) of land in the northwest of the city from Propas Street and the Nofei Yam neighborhood in the south to the municipal border in the north and from Derekh Namir in the east to the sea in the west. The land has thousands of owners including heirs of the original owners and heirs of heirs, with the plan being around for decades and finally entering the planning pipeline in 2004.
TA/3700 currently includes 12,000 housing units, 1,500 hotel rooms, 147,000 square meters of office space, 68,000 square meters of commercial space and a 100 acre ecological park along the coast. But these numbers are likely to rise.
The plan's original balance and allocation tables were published in 2018, and drew about 130 objections from the owners. The conclusions of the objection investigator, appraiser Levana Eshed, led the municipality to the decision to amend the tables in May 2021. However, only at the beginning of the week, after many postponements, were the amended tables published. For the landowners, this is a particularly important step: the tables actually divide the plots between them in the future plan - both in terms of the location of the plot and the building rights that will be permitted. These tables determine what each landowner will receive when the plan is completed.
Land appraiser Dani Kamil of Kamil, Treshanski Refeal Real Estate Appraisers, which has been professionally supporting the plan for years, explains that the tables now being published could include many changes from the previous tables and recommends that each landowner checks through them carefully. He says, "This is land with many complications. There are quite a few owners there who own parts of land, parts of housing units, there are conflicts of interest between them and quite a few disputes. The republishing of the tables requires every landowner to check carefully what they are getting now: the result, compared to the tables of 2018, may change substantially, and it is a shame that they will find this out too late, after the time for objections and appeals has expired.
"I can say that we are already seeing dramatic changes in the new tables," said Adv. Miriam Donin-Shoob, partner at law firm EBN & Co., which represents many landowners in the plan. "But it is too early to determine what their impact will be right now on the landowners."
Tel Aviv Municipality said, "The documents of the appraisal principles and the revised balance tables, in accordance with the decision of the local committee, were uploaded to the Planning Administration website. In the coming days, it will be published in accordance with amendment 106 B for objections. If objections are received, a date will be arranged for the discussion."
The timetable: At least two years if there are no surprises
"Publishing the tables undoubtedly represents important progress," said Adv. Shmuel Shoob of Shoob & Co. Law Office, who represents hundreds of the landowners. "We thought this publication would happen years ago, it's not an exact science: there were objections, the investigator submitted her conclusions, but it was delayed more than expected.
"I estimate that it will take another two or three years until this stage is completed, and I hope that the municipality will deal with things more energy than in the past. They can discuss objections for two or three months, or for a year or two. I really hope that we will see real progress in three years at the most."
In addition to the objections that can now be filed, it will also be possible to submit appeals to the court, which by itself delay the entire procedure by several years. Land appraiser Shani Aharon of Kamil, Treshanski Refeal Real Estate Appraisers fears delays could be especially long: "This is a move that thousands of owners have been impatiently waiting for. To me, it is equivalent to the drama of releasing the land in Sde Dov. What will happen now? Or will the move finally 'flow', and we'll see a new neighborhood that will start to rise within a few years, or it will continue to drag on."
The planning: Potential to increase rights
These are not the only delays expected in the future: one of the important matters that the planners must deal with is handling Area 1, the southernmost area of the five areas in TA/3700, which was planned back when Sde Dov Airport operated adjacent to it. At the time this required planning restrictions. At some point, renewed planning will be required, in favor of increasing the rights that has become possible since the closure of the airport - and such a step may add hundreds or even thousands of units to the plan.
Dani Treshanski of Kamil, Treshanski Refeal Real Estate Appraisers said, "The TA/3700 plan has to be on the same scale and size as construction at Sde Dov and that isn't the situation at the moment. If in Sde Dov the density is 17 units per dunam on average, in the northwest district we are talking about a density of six units per dunam, maybe eight units per dunam at most, with buildings of eight floors at most. This means that rights can be increased by tens of percent."
Area 1 currently has 866 planned housing units in an area of 659 dunams. This means that the density in it in a rough calculation is less than 1.5 units per dunam on average, which indicates the planning potential. However, here, too, we are talking about a procedure that will last for years, since the preparation of a new plan for the area must be completed by the Tel Aviv District Committee for Planning and Construction.
Prices: 20% jump since the closure of Sde Dov airport
Over last two years, real estate prices have soared almost everywhere in Israel, as well as in the northwest Tel Aviv. However, in this case the upward push of prices comes mainly from the closure of Sde Dov airport. The direct effect, in the form of a potential addition of thousands of units, is added to the planning significance - the creation of a sequence of neighborhoods in the north of the city, which together will offer tens of thousands of new housing units - and thus the value of the land, which is already high, only rises. Experts speak of an increase of about 20% since the airport was closed.
"This is one of the last land blocks left for planning in Tel Aviv, and one of the most expensive," said Aharon. "There is no more empty land in the city, so its importance is enormous. Sde Dov's closure hasn't yet been fully incorporated into the plan, and there are still many complex appraisal principles that have not yet been resolved. You could write an entire book about this plan, and it is not certain that publication of the tables is the last chapter in it."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 15, 2023.
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