As bike lanes grow, Tel Aviv residents demand voice

After years of pressure from advocacy groups, the Tel Aviv Municipality has finally adopted an aggressively pro-bicycle agenda. Bike lanes are being paved, a bike-share system is being launched, and the city’s PR machine is working hard to sell the new strategy. Yet, the insensitivity and obtuseness which with the new policy is being implemented have already provoked a limited backlash, which, if left unchecked, threatens to endanger the entire project.

Tel Aviv is experiencing a surge of interest in urban cycling. As the number of people choosing to get around the city by bicycle has grown in recent years, so has the municipality’s budget for building new bike lanes. According to a new 5-year plan, close to 40 km of new bike lanes will be paved over the next few years, many of them along central streets. Meanwhile, the city’s bike lanes themselves have gradually evolved from pitiful logos spray painted onto sidewalks to color-coded sidewalk paths, to the elegant street-level, separated lanes built along main streets in the eastern part of the city in recent years.

All of this has engendered a new breed of activists, mostly car owners, who complain that city hall’s newfound enthusiasm for bicycles will lead to the unilateral elimination of dozens of already-scarce parking spots. While still in its infancy, the backlash has already taken on a number of different forms: internet activism, angry exchanges at city council meetings, even a lawsuit.

Tel Aviv is not alone in facing such a backlash. Similar scenarios have played out recently in several other cities around the world. In New York, where the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pursuing an ambitious program of urban sustainability, an energetic new transportation commissioner has installed some 400 kilometers of new bike lanes over the last four years, eliminating hundreds of parking spots in the process. While considered by many to be a success – the project has led to a sharp increase in bicycle use while reducing traffic accidents – it has also drawn some very vocal criticism, mainly from a privileged minority of car owners.

Looked at differently, however, perhaps the bike lanes versus parking discourse reflects a false dichotomy. Listen closely to the arguments of opponents and it becomes clear that what really irks them, even more than the loss of a few parking spots, is that no one bothered to include them in the decision-making process. On the other side, the pro-bicycle crowd has conveniently ignored the lack of transparency to which it would normally object.

If this is the case, then perhaps the best way to defuse the anti-bike backlash before it spreads is for the municipality to engage in an open, honest dialogue with the public. This might begin by presenting the city’s 5-year plan for bike lanes – formulated without public participation and never approved by the city council – to the public, while clearly communicating the reasoning behind it and its benefits, and creating space for public input.

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Foreigners pay NIS 34m for 3 flats in Meier on Rothschild

Berggruen Residential reports that it sold three apartments in its Meier on Rothschild luxury high-rise in Tel Aviv for NIS 34 million. The three apartments were sold to foreign residents during a housing fair in Paris.

A 393-square meter apartment with two 12-square meter balconies on the 18th floor was sold for NIS 17 million. A 273-square meter apartment with a 12-square meter balcony on the 18th floor was sold for NIS 11.3 million. A three-room apartment on the second floor was sold for NIS 5.5 million.

Berggruen Residential CEO Yigal Tzemach said, "The apartments sold this week gave an average price of $13,000 per square meter, $2,000 more than the average price per square meter in 2010. I believe that, as construction progresses - it is currently at stage of the underground parking garage - prices will continue to climb. The pace of sales in the building is definitely satisfactory, and more than half of the 121 apartments have been sold."

Buying castles in the sky

Earlier this month, developer Gindi Holdings held a "housing fair" to showcase and sell apartments in the company's new project in Rishon Letzion. Within an hour 180 apartments had been sold for NIS 450 million. One has to wonder if the happy shoppers snapping up apartments that exist on paper alone, for a 10% discount, realize that the company hasn't obtained a building permit yet, and what that could mean.

It is perfectly legal to market and sell apartments for which no building permit exists. In fact it's common practice in the Israeli real estate market, where supply is low and homes get bought despite being no more than a plan on paper.In many cases, selling apartments still at an imaginary stage isn't a problem. Yet there is an uncertainty factor and there is the danger that buyers won't get exactly what they've been promised. Amnon Sorek, a lawyer with Hamburger, Evron & Co., says buying on paper can mean a long wait and a lot of uncertainty.

"No building permit is precisely identical to the city master plan, and therefore, until a building permit exists, there's no certainty that the number of apartments the developer is talking about will be approved," he says. "This is especially pertinent in cases where the developer is asking for the rules to be relaxed, to build extra apartments to maximize profit on the lot. It takes about half a year to obtain a permit, on average, but in cases where the master plan doesn't have approval or the developer is seeking extras, a building permit will only be approved after the process of hearing objections. That can hold up the permit by years."

Buyers of apartments that are still on paper are well advised to make sure the contract states a deadline for obtaining a building permit, and that if it's missed, they can void the contract and get their money back, Sorek says. He tells the story of a deal his law office handled, in which a developer spent a year getting a permit to put up two buildings. When a few years later people began moving into the neighborhood, the developer wanted to build two more buildings next door and 92 objections were filed by people who'd already moved in. Getting the permits for the two new buildings took three years, Sorek says.

Obtaining the building permit is one problem. Another is that the final product may not be the same as envisioned, warns Ofra Cohen, a partner in the real estate department at the Amit, Pollak, Matalon & Co. law offices. "As long as there's no building permit, the final plan for the project isn't confirmed," she says. "The master plan defines maximal building rights. The developer can exercise these rights in part or in full, decide whether the building will have two sections or one tall tower. But the structure of the building remains unclear until the building permit is obtained, and therefore, which way the apartment will face will be uncertain until then. The developer may have promised a garden beneath the window but in the end put a parking lot there."

In June 2010, well after marketing began for the Meier on Rothschild project in Tel Aviv, designed by Richard Meier, the Tel Aviv Planning and Building Committee decided to let the Berggruen and Hagag groups build 37 stories instead of 32. That decision is highly material to buyers at the top. Somebody who bought an apartment on the 31st floor, thinking there would only be one story above, now has six neighbors on his head.

Another problem in obtaining a building permit may be that there's no master plan in place for the lot in question. Even if there is one, the contractor may try to get it changed. For instance, Capital Group organized a purchasing group to develop the site of 8 Hadoar Street in Jaffa. The group bought a plot for which the master plan allowed residential construction. All 27 apartments were sold on paper. But the group sought to exercise full building rights in a manner that required a change to the master plan for the site, and submitted a new plan to the city. That variance has held up the building permit to this day; the group is still waiting for construction to start.

Even renowned developers acting in accordance with approved master plans, not applying for any variances, may run into obstacles that hold up the building permit. For instance, buyers who bought future homes being sold by the Levinstein group a year ago, for a project in the town of Kadima-Zoran in the Sharon, were assured by the company that obtaining a building permit was a matter of weeks. The fact that one of the four buildings was already under construction buttressed the company's sense of security. But to this date no permit has been forthcoming. The local planning and building committee claims it's still looking into fire safety and other permits. The buyers received an option to cancel their contracts and get their money back, but in the year that passed, housing prices in Israel rose, so they would mostly prefer to continue waiting for the project to go up rather than look elsewhere. But meanwhile they have to keep paying rent wherever they're living.

In another case, the Boulevard Group put together by developer Ami Federman bought land in 2006 on Markolet Street in Florentin, Tel Aviv, for which there is a city plan allowing 108 apartments to be built. Federman applied for a building permit based on the city plan for the site and didn't seek any extras, to avoid delays. While waiting for the permit, he began marketing the future apartments and suddenly the city demanded the group also buy a 27-square-meter triangle of adjacent land owned by the city as well. He agreed, but the acquisition required the permission of the interior minister, who took a full year to put ink to paper. The delays have continued and all in all the group has been waiting for four years for a building permit.

Yaacov Atrakchi, owner and CEO of Aura Israel, thinks developers shouldn't market homes in places where they aren't likely to get a building permit without delays. He personally only markets when there is a master plan in force, and he hasn't sought any variances, and the planning authorities are in line. Even when he's confident a building permit will be forthcoming soon, he makes sure too commit to a timeline, Atrakchi adds. "The buyer signs an agreement with an appendix regarding the permit, which says that if there's no permit within half a year at most, he can choose to get his money back or extend the agreement by a finite term." Sorek points out that the law limits the amount of money the developer can take in advance until a building permit has been produced: 7.5% of the price of the dwelling. "The developer can take more in advance only if he provides an autonomous bank guarantee securing the buyer," Sorek advises. "When the building permit is produced, the bank guarantee is replaced with a sales law guarantee."

Until the building permit is produced, money should be held in trust, suggests Cohen, and when the permit is forthcoming the buyer should make sure its terms comply with what he was promised. If there are material differences, he should be entitled to get out of the deal, she says. Given the hassle, why buy an apartment on paper at all? Gil Shenhav, an architect with Cnaan Shenhav Architects, says price is the main draw. It's become common practice because the buyer can get a discount of 10% to 15% compared with the price he'd pay if the apartment was already standing, he says. But Sorek isn't so sure it pays. "There is a difference if construction is going to start in year or four years," he notes. "Most people who buy new apartments want to live in them and therefore want to know when they'll be able to move in." You may pay now and get a hefty discount, but then only get the apartment five years down the line - and meanwhile be stuck forking over a fortune in rent.

Source Haaretz