For 81 years, the runway lay in the heart of a North Tel Aviv neighborhood, blocking access to the beach and preventing the city's development northwards. Sde Dov Airfield was part of the Tel Aviv landscape since the British Mandate period. Today, after the dismantling of over half a million sq.m. of buildings and infrastructure, you can close your eyes and imagine a new, bustling mini-city in Israel, with 16,000 new apartments spread out over 1,500 dunams facing the sea.
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Will this be the natural continuation of Herbert Samuel and HaYarkon streets, which, due to their beachfront location, are considered the most expensive in Israel, or, as promised by the government – will the new district also offer the ever-receding dream of affordable housing?
To judge from the last tender, Tel Aviv's high prices will not skip Sde Dov, particularly the apartments with a sea view. The boundaries of the new district are Levi Eshkol Street, the new Lamed neighborhood, and Nofei Yam neighborhood on the east; the beach on the west; Shai Agnon Street on the south; and Propes Street on the north.
The mistake made by the Israel Land Authority is that instead of flooding the market with all 16,000 apartments, which would be the right thing to do, it is dividing the land into portions in small tenders. The prices are extremely high, and this strategy will produce a further meteoric rise.
At a real estate conference held this week with Minister of the Interior Ayelet Shaked, she admitted the strategy was a mistake. "The salami slice approach will drive prices up," she said regarding Sde Dov.
The absurdity that will undoubtedly cause prices to rise is that only about 10% of the total number of apartments planned for the Sde Dov area (about 1,500 out of a planned 16,000) have so far been placed on the market. This step is projected to bring into the state's coffers about NIS4.5 billion, and may cover the budget hole.
The winning companies are K.M. Madaf 5 of the Hanan Mor Group, which will pay NIS1.46 billion for 7.6 dunams, on which it will build 458 apartments; Avisror Moshe and Sons have offered NIS1.09 billion for 7.3 dunams to build 406 apartments; a partnership between the Meshulam Levinstein Group, Mivne Group, and Allied won a third tender for 230 apartments on 4.6 dunams for NIS634 million; and Canada-Israel's G.Z. Madaf 35 won a tender for 8.65 dunams on which it will build 480 apartments, for a price tag of NIS1.25 billion.
The price paid by the developers reflects a land cost of NIS2.8 million per apartment, meaning that the actual prices of the apartments will be around NIS5 million. As usual, the sea view will provide a central incentive for raising prices.
Near the sea
The More Group, owned by Hanan Mor and Avi Maor, won one of the major tenders on the westernmost plot, which will feature an open view of the sea from most of the apartments. The area is entirely surrounded by the neighborhood's two central parks. The compound will combine a 39- or 40-floor residential tower alongside perimeter-block construction, a hotel, and a lifestyle center with a spa, gym, pool, and other facilities. In all, the tender includes 458 housing units, about 100 hotel rooms, and commercial areas totaling about 1,500 sq.m.
More CEO Avi Maor said: "This is the first time in many years that a new neighborhood of this size is being planned on available land facing the Tel Aviv beach. The neighborhood will be based on state-of-the-art, 21st-century planning principles. This is the best location in Tel Aviv, with all the necessary community services, two spacious parks, education and culture institutions, near Yarkon Park, the Beach Promenade, and Tel Aviv Port, with all its cafés, restaurants, and other attractions."
According to Avisror, "This is one of the most sought-after land plots in the central area and apartments there are expected to be in high demand. Tel Aviv is a City that Never Sleeps in terms of apartment prices, too. Our data shows that today's apartment prices already reflect similar land costs."
What about the expected prices? According to estimates in the real estate sector, the prices will be around NIS75-90,000 per sq.m., and for apartments on higher floors and penthouses – up to NIS120,000 per sq.m.
Ohad Danos, former president of the Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers, said: "The recent wins in the state tenders at Sde Dov and the incredible results achieved there don't necessarily attest to the worsening housing problem due to the slow release of lands caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but rather to the revival of the luxury residence market, thanks to the very same pandemic.
"The luxury market has been asleep for the last five years. The developers' projections for selling at prices reaching an average of NIS60,000 per built sq.m. including VAT are not divorced from reality. The future neighborhood will be one of the best in Tel Aviv, facing the sea and not far from the city center. The right combination of apartments that will not forget the city's young population will create a new, lively district, in Gangnam Style."
A beach and a park
The new residential district in the Sde Dov area is planned to include about 16,000 housing units, half a million sq.m. of commercial and industrial areas, 3,700 hotel rooms, a beachfront park and a 2-kilometer-long beach, public facilities, a city square, an open public area, and pedestrian paths.
The first part of the neighborhood will be spread out over an area totaling about 340 dunams. This is one of three plans to install planning infrastructure for the new residential district. The new neighborhood will be called Eshkol and it will include about 4,844 housing units in mixed-use urban construction and an average net density of about 54 housing units per residential dunam.
The plan also includes commercial and office areas totaling about 191,000 sq.m. and hospitality facilities totaling about 30,000 sq.m.
Yaakov Kwint, director of the ILA, promises affordable housing at Sde Dov, despite the high prices: "The marketing of the first neighborhood in the Sde Dov District National Plan creates a variety of residential solutions, including affordable housing. The new neighborhood is planned as a green and public transit-oriented neighborhood, with optimal use of land for mixed uses, including office space, hospitality, and commercial uses alongside housing units, and will offer a high standard of living. In parallel, the ILA is acting to quickly advance the other plans in the Dov District, which are important for the city, the economy, and Israeli society."
Construction in the neighborhood will be based on three types of structures: perimeter-block construction, which creates an active street front, 16-floor buildings, and towers up to 41 floors tall. The residential options will include small apartments, accessible apartments for people with disabilities, and assisted living facilities. According to Atty. Kwint, hundreds of housing units will be marketed at affordable prices, based on the understanding that a diverse population is a necessary element in creating a vibrant urban atmosphere, and with the intention of advancing social equality in the city. One quarter of the apartments will be small.
The center of the new district, and its most attractive location, will be the beach and the apartments looking out on it at a very short walking distance. The beach will be the natural and landscape resource demarcating the district's 2-km-long western border. The beachfront park bordering the sand strip will offer a broad promenade combining gardens, recreational areas, sport courts, and playgrounds.
The park will serve as a wide strip connected to the heart of the district via a number of streets and constituting an open public area serving the residents of the district, residents of nearby neighborhoods, and residents of Tel Aviv in general. Movement through the park will be restricted to walking and cycling. Two parking lots will be built at the park's edges. The park will implement ecological principles such as retaining surface runoff and absorbing runoff from the neighborhood, using local and water-efficient vegetation, balancing earthworks in the compound, and conservation of natural soil.
Some of the buildings will have a view of the sea from their balconies. The beach will remain open to the public and will include recreational facilities, educational, cultural, and commercial activities, a marine sport center with surfing clubs, a maritime school, and a dock for boats.
Preserving the environment
The green line of the light rail system will provide easy transportation access. Construction density will be higher near the line, which is planned to continue down Einstein Street and Ibn Gabirol Street. The number of stores will be lower than required in new construction in areas that are not close to mass transit systems and will be even lower near the light rail stations. Public facilities and open neighborhood areas will be located at minimal walking distance from all the residential buildings. The streets will be more pedestrian-friendly, the sidewalks will be wide and shaded, green arteries will provide shortcuts for pedestrians. A full bike lane system will be built separately from vehicle and pedestrian traffic lanes, except in residential streets with light traffic.
High-rise buildings will be planned so as to avoid blocking the wind blowing from the sea, while ensuring wind tunnels between adjacent towers and minimizing shading of public areas and building facades. The planners will examine the economic viability of building natural resource-efficient infrastructure and using alternative and renewable energy sources such as surplus heat from the Reading Power Station for heating, seawater and groundwater for cooling, a network of natural gas supply for the buildings, building wind turbines on the top of tall buildings, transferring surface runoff from roofs and highways to the aquifer in the winter and using the aquifer and gray water from moshavim for irrigation in the summer.
"We are advancing strategic plans in the Sde Dov area as a city that will allow residents to enjoy services and infrastructure in a variety of fields," updates City Council member Sigal Weitzman, who holds the innovation and technology portfolio. "Using drones and robots, smart cameras and artificial intelligence will allow us to conserve energy and contribute to the residents and the community."
Weitzman has been active for years in advancing the airfield's evacuation and opening two paths that will connect the neighborhoods to the Tel Aviv Promenade and the beach. According to her, "The construction of a new district in Tel Aviv is a special opportunity to plan the built space in a holistic and innovative manner and include elements that impact residents' lifestyle and quality of life in the present and the future, the consumption of natural resources, and the natural systems surrounding us. There is general consensus that the district is the right scale for promoting sustainability values."
Worldwide, there are many examples of sustainable districts. Their physical planning is essentially different from each other because it is suited to the society and environment in which they were built, and still, there are similarities in the efforts taken by the municipality and the planners in responding to present needs without impairing the ability of future generations to fulfil their needs.
Big money
The big question is, what will the state do with the big money that Sde Dov will bring in? Last week, MK Meir Yitzhak Halevi, until recently mayor of Eilat, submitted a request to the Chairman of the Finance Committee to hold an urgent meeting on the subject of the designation of the income from marketing construction in the Sde Dov compound. Yitzhak Halevi demands: "The income from the total marketing of the compound (16,000 apartments), is estimated at over NIS40 billion. The issue of compensating Eilat due to the major damage it sustained must be discussed again in light of the huge value estimates."
About 70% of the land is held by the state and the Tel Aviv Municipality. The rest of the land is in the private hands of thousands of landholders, who've been waiting for decades for the airfield's evacuation and approval of the plans.
The Herzliya Magistrate Court recently convened at the request of the administrators of the Nofei Yam neighborhood ("HaGush HaGadol") in Tel Aviv ahead of the distribution of land rights in the Eshkol compound at Sde Dov to private landowners. The court approved the administrators' request to appoint a land appraiser to determine the relative value of the rights in the Eshkol compound and in the other compounds. This means that the realization of the rights is closer than ever.
According to Atty. Shmuel Shuv and Na'ama Schiff from the Shuv & Co. law firm, which represents thousands of private landowners in the Sde Dov compound: "The court's orders to prepare for dividing the land rights in the Eshkol compound are great news for all the private landowners, who have been waiting for many years to realize their rights in the land. The prices we've recently seen in the ILA land tenders in the compound, which were 6.5 times higher than the ILA's minimum prices, may be the minimum threshold for private owners acting to realize their rights in independent construction or in combination deals with developers. Apartment prices throughout the compound will rise, whether built on state land or on private land. The first owners to profit will be those who joined forces to work together with the block administrators for dividing and realizing the rights."
An important decision in the matter, which encourages the construction of affordable housing in the luxury compound, was made this week and refers to what is called ARH – affordable rental housing, which in effect places the responsibility for building affordable housing on the landowners. A total of 2,400 apartments were allocated for publicly-owned ARH (owned by the Tel Aviv Municipality); another 4,500 apartments are defined as "comprehensive housing that includes small housing units, long-term rentals, apartments without parking spaces, student dormitories, and assisted living facilities."
This week, Justice Yael Blecher of the Tel Aviv Court for Administrative Affairs rejected a petition by landowners in Sde Dov to remove the lands intended for long-term rentals from the computations of the unification and division process, essentially meaning their land will be expropriated. This means that these apartments will be registered under the ownership of the Tel Aviv Municipality, with no compensation.
A peek at the neighbors
The plots near Sde Dov are petitioning to remove the height restrictions imposed in the past due to the airfield
The evacuation of Sde Dov also impacts the nearby plans – 3700 and 3388 – for building thousands more housing units. Work on these plans began years ago, and in some of the compounds, height restrictions were imposed due to the airfield requirements. Today, planning committees are examining options for changing the plans.
In late August, the Tel Aviv Local Committee approved the publication of freeze paragraphs (paragraphs 77 and 78 in the Planning and Construction Law), which will prevent issuing permits in Plan 3388 in northwest Tel Aviv until the preparation of an updated plan for the compound, for a period of three years.
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The plan is for an area of about 190 dunams between HaGush HaGadol, the Sde Dov district, and the area included in Plan 3700. The land is owned by many private owners, the ILA, and the Tel Aviv Municipality. Over the past 20 years, plans in the compound have been advanced that include height restrictions due to the area's proximity to Sde Dov.
For years, the committee insisted on continuing to advance the planning under the same criteria as those set when the field was still operative. About two months ago, the Appeals Committee decided to approve a plan that includes balancing and division tables between the owners. Now, the Local Committee members understand that in light of the airfield's evacuation, the previous plan is incompatible with contemporary planning conceptions and does not exploit the potential inherent in the territory's division.
The plan does not take into account issues such as densification, mixed uses, the green line of the light rail system, and more. The Local Committee intends to prepare a new plan, including the unification and division of the entire compound, which will enhance construction rights. The committee asked to publish a notice about the new plan according to paragraph 77 and determine that a condition for receiving a building permit will be the approval of the new plan.
Atty. Shmuel Shuv, a partner in the Shuv & Co. firm that represents some of the landowners, notes that although the decision constitutes another delay in the ability of the landowners to realize their rights in the land, the expected addition of rights as part of the new plan will raise the value of the lands they own. According to Shuv, the addition of rights in plan 3700 for areas close to the airfield is also being examined at this time, and despite the time the process takes, this is the right decision in the long run.
Hopefully, the landowners will not have to wait another 20 years for the approval of the new plan and the planning committees will hasten its approval, providing hundreds more housing units in the most in-demand area in Tel Aviv.
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