Opponents say none of the land should be transferred to private hands in a neighborhood suffering from a severe shortage of public space.
By Ilan Lior

Environmentalists and local people fear that Tel Aviv will push through a plan to put up residential and commercial buildings at a former market in the south of the city. On Wednesday, the local planning and building committee will hear objections to the plan.

In recent days, the municipality has been demolishing the Aliyah market, built in the 1930s in Bauhaus style. The last merchants closed up shop in the beginning of the 1990s.

The municipality, which owns the land under the market, plans to sell part of the space to a developer, who will build two apartment buildings containing 147 apartments. Around 70 of the apartments are intended for affordable housing.

The municipality plans to preserve a building on the western side of the site for public use. The plan’s opponents say none of the land should be transferred to private hands in a neighborhood suffering from a severe shortage of public space.

“The municipality is trying to act by stealth if several days before a decision is reached it’s trying to establish facts on the ground,” says Omer Cohen, an urban planner who lives in the next-door Florentin neighborhood.

“One of our suggestions, for example, is to preserve all the buildings and create a communal cultural center that would answer the public’s needs and contribute to the area’s development.”

The Israel Union for Environmental Defense wrote to the municipality, demanding that the demolition work be halted. “If you begin demolishing before hearing the objections, you’re declaring that the process is meaningless,” said attorney Keren Halperin-Museri, director of the group’s community and environment department. “Everyone is watching the area of the complex, because it can answer the basic needs of the neighborhood’s residents for public buildings and open areas. We don’t want to risk losing this chance.”

A spokesman for the municipality said the plan to build 147 housing units had already been fully approved and that the objections pertain only to minor changes that would provide affordable housing.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/greens-rap-tel-aviv-city-hall-for-starting-to-tear-down-historic-aliya-market-1.422463