The Tel Aviv District Planning and Building Committee has approved a large new neighborhood in South Ramat Efal, Ramat Gan. The plan calls for the construction of 3,700 housing units and 38 dunams (9.5 acres) of office space on 309 dunams (77.25 acres) of land east of Road 4 and north of Road 461 near the Messubim Interchange.
The land belonging to the Israel Land Authority (ILA) has been leased to Shikun & Binui Holdings Ltd. (TASE: SKBN), which has initiated the plan. The overall plan has been approved although a detailed plan is still required for infrastructures such as road, sewage and drainage before building permits can be issued.
The plan also faces major objections, mainly from the residents of Ramat Efal, and it is likely to be many years before construction begins, and then probably in stages.
The Ramat Efal Local Council said, "The plan does not excel in spirit or imagination and creates on the southern outskirts of Ramat Efal, a random suburban neighborhood, without character, whose only prominence will be the exceptional percentage of construction, and crushed by the load built on it."
The plan designed by Kolker Kolker Epstein architects allows for construction of apartment buildings with 17-floors.
The Alon, Rikhlin, Peretz law firm, which represents those objecting to the plan, said it was, "more suited to the Ramat Gan masterplan than a quiet, suburban, pastoral area."
Shikun & Binui said, "Planning of the neighborhood is based on urban and sustainable values and the vision of an innovative and smart city with mixed use and commercial ground floors along the main streets and basic inclusiveness in all aspects of the modern urban fabric of life."