After years of neglect Kikar Hamedina to get upgrade

After decades of delays, the plan to build three 40-floor residential high-rises in Tel Aviv's landmark Kikar Medina has finally been approved. The three towers will contain 453 apartments on land owned by dozens of people as well as the municipality, who will receive 6,000-sq.m. of building and several small stores in the surrounding parkland.

"You have to understand how special this project is for Tel Aviv, which will include a 10-acre park," said architect Ami Mor from MYS Architects, which has been responsible for the project. "For all our efforts in the Tel Aviv Wholesale market project, for example, we obtained a park of just 2.25 acres. Here we are talking about 10 acres. It will be the largest park in any Tel Aviv neighborhood and it will be a pearl."

Globes: Akirov Towers also has a park open to the public but people don't really go there.

Mor said, "That is something completely different. In Akirov the land was higher and a separation of levels was created. With Kikar Medina, there will be no fences and the entire project will be at street level, accessible from every direction. The most important thing from Tel Aviv Municipality's point of view was that the park will be accessible to the public, and the previous city engineer Herzi Berkovitz was insistent about this and he also initiated the cancellation of a planned commercial project that would have blocked views across the park. The current plan has smaller towers that are further apart so that the view is not concealed. Half of the square will in fact be parkland with places to sit and a number of very small stores operated by the municipality. In my opinion it will be the city's most attractive park."