dov
September 27th, 2005, 01:32 PM
By Yuval Azoulay
The Tel Aviv Municipality is sick of the sight of hundreds of neglected buildings all over the city. They scar the surroundings, often resulting in a depreciation in the value of adjacent apartments and properties. In some cases abandoned and broken down properties have become an environmental hazard.
Now the municipality has begun to implement an aggressive and uncompromising policy: If owners do not renovate the buildings they own, the municipality will ask the court to obligate them to do so. Thus, two weeks ago a first request was submitted to the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court for an order requiring the three owners of a neglected residential building at 83 Dizengoff Street to act. A similar request was filed on Wednesday against Zvidan Investments, the owner of the building that housed the Coliseum Club in Kikar Atarim. The city's legal adviser, attorney Ahaz Ben Ari, says these are the first two of 10 petitions to be submitted in the near future as "a first stage in a campaign that the municipality is planning to conduct against renovation-refusers."
Ben Ari says the city has in recent months assembled a particularly "shocking" collection of neglected buildings in all parts of the city that are indisputably in need of renovation."
The building at 167 Hayarkon Street, where the Coliseum used to be, was sold at the end of March 1999 by the Coliseum Company to Zvidan Investments. Over the years, according to the petition submitted to the court, the property was not maintained and today the state of its upkeep and appearance is grim. In their petition attorneys Ilan Sharkun and Boaz Greenberg, who represent the municipality, argue: "The property is very neglected, dirty and abandoned so that it constitutes a `wound in the heart of the city' and causes mortal damage to its appearance."
They describe the sequence of events that preceded this move, including an exchange of letters and contacts between the city and representatives of Zvidan Investments, and notices the municipality sent to the company in which it is repeatedly asked that the neglected property on Hayarkon Street be renovated. Sharkun and Greenberg note that at the end of last June, Zvidan contacted the municipality and claimed it could not rent the property as it is not possible to receive a business license. Therefore the company sought an assurance in principle that the building's tenant will receive a business license, as it will then be able to rent and solve the problem of renovation. The municipality rejected the proposal as an attempt to condition renovation on the granting of the license to a property that it perceives as problematic.
The municipality says the obligation to renovate is incumbent on the company under provision 54 of the municipal bylaw on maintaining order and cleanliness, and any request for a license will be discussed in a separate procedure and in a businesslike manner with no connection to the issue of the renovation.
The municipality has requested of the court that should the owner of the Yarkon Street property not renovate it within half a year, the municipality be granted the right to have renovation done and charge Zvidan Investments for the expense, while determining that appropriate securities be deposited with the municipality to ensure payment of the debt.
The Coliseum building is situated at a very strategic location, in the heart of Kikar Atarim, a focal point for tourism and an entertainment area, "such that it is fatally damaging to its appearance and image," wrote the attorneys for the municipality. "It is untenable that a situation in which a building located in the very heart of Tel Aviv, in one of the busiest and most visited places in the city, remains neglected and abandoned by its owners, constituting an aesthetic-visual blight for passersby on the street and above all for the tenants of the buildings adjacent to it, while the owner of the building is not lifting a finger in the matter and evading the municipality's requirements to renovate it."
In a conversation with Haaretz, the CEO of the municipal company Ezra Uvizzaron, Mark Kukun, defined the state of the building as "catastrophic." According to him, "At the building there are safety hazards and parts of it are in danger of collapse. This is an old building, from the 1960s, and therefore there is no alternative but to renovate it."
Attorney Ziv Ironi, who represents Zvidan Investments, says that he cannot respond on the matter as he has not yet received the municipality's request that has been submitted to the court.
Not only in South Tel Aviv
The situation at 83 Dizengoff Street, which is supposed to serve as a residential building, is not much better. In a proceeding that the municipality has initiated, it is asking the court to obligate the three private owners of the building to renovate it immediately or to allow the municipality to renovate the building itself and charge them with the expenses.
"This place looks as though an anti-tank unit has practiced on it. It is broken open to the four winds, something appalling," said the municipality's legal adviser, attorney Ben Ari.
The Ezra Uvizzaron company renovates about 100 buildings each year throughout Tel Aviv, altogether about 2,000 dwelling units. In all cases these renovations are not carried out under court order but rather at the desire of the property owners. According to Kukun, every year his company succeeds in renovating only a 10th of the buildings and structures in Tel Aviv that need renovating.
In the city, he says, there are about 20,000 structures that need a face-lift, as most of them were erected in the 1950s and the 1960s: "During that period the building standards were low. As time goes by, the number of buildings that will need renovation will increase." A large portion of these buildings is located in the southern part of the city, but in old Ramat Aviv, on Burla and Pasternak Streets, there are buildings that show signs of needing repainting.
At the Tel Aviv Municipality, they take pride in the long-term loans that are granted to house committees and property owners who comply with their requirements and agree to renovate their neglected properties. These are loans for up to NIS 27,000 per housing unit, which can be repaid in 48 payments, sometimes even more. "A renovation of this sort serves everyone's interests: The city is made more beautiful and also the owners of the property can enjoy a significant increase in its value," says Kukun. Despite the attractive loans, many property owners in South Tel Aviv and Jaffa, for example, are in no hurry to take them because of their difficult financial situation. "They are barely able to pay NIS 100 for the house committee," says a senior source at the municipality. "This is the main reason we are still not succeeding in renovating most of the properties in Tel Aviv requiring a face-lift."
The state's interest
As if this difficulty were not enough, the municipality reports a spreading phenomenon: property owners have "discovered" Provision 330 in the Municipalities Ordinance, whereby a building that is demolished or damaged and is therefore not inhabited, is not subject to municipal property tax.
Scores of property owners, tired of paying property tax, are intentionally neglecting their properties, the city suspects.
"The exemption from property tax is not limited in time, and the meaning of this provision is destructive from the urban point of view because it provides an economic incentive for neglecting buildings. The more you neglect, the more you benefit," says legal adviser Ben Ari.
A senior municipal source says there has been an attempt to spearhead a change in Knesset legislation on this issue, to limit the tax exemption on such properties to a period of four years on the assumption this will be sufficient time to renovate the property and renew its operation. However, according to this source, the move is encountering opposition from the Finance Ministry: "It turns out that the state has buildings that are in worse shape than many other neglected buildings in Tel Aviv. The state simply is not interested in having the exemption limited in time because the obligation to pay property tax will also apply to it."
Property tax aside, Ben Ari says that for months now a proposed law formulated by the TA Municipality has been lying around the Interior Ministry in Jerusalem. It is aimed at regularizing the matter of the renovation of neglected properties and at making explicitly clear the obligation of every property owner to see to it that the appearance of every building and its yard will be pleasant. Under the proposal, the local authority in whose boundaries a property in need of renovation is located will be able to renovate it under its own steam and charge the owners for the costs.
At present the local authorities have to deal with this only by means of municipal bylaws. "In most places in the country this mechanism does not work because of the relative weakness of the bylaws and the light punishment for those who break them. Primary legislation could well regularize this issue," says Ben Ari.
The Tel Aviv Municipality is sick of the sight of hundreds of neglected buildings all over the city. They scar the surroundings, often resulting in a depreciation in the value of adjacent apartments and properties. In some cases abandoned and broken down properties have become an environmental hazard.
Now the municipality has begun to implement an aggressive and uncompromising policy: If owners do not renovate the buildings they own, the municipality will ask the court to obligate them to do so. Thus, two weeks ago a first request was submitted to the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court for an order requiring the three owners of a neglected residential building at 83 Dizengoff Street to act. A similar request was filed on Wednesday against Zvidan Investments, the owner of the building that housed the Coliseum Club in Kikar Atarim. The city's legal adviser, attorney Ahaz Ben Ari, says these are the first two of 10 petitions to be submitted in the near future as "a first stage in a campaign that the municipality is planning to conduct against renovation-refusers."
Ben Ari says the city has in recent months assembled a particularly "shocking" collection of neglected buildings in all parts of the city that are indisputably in need of renovation."
The building at 167 Hayarkon Street, where the Coliseum used to be, was sold at the end of March 1999 by the Coliseum Company to Zvidan Investments. Over the years, according to the petition submitted to the court, the property was not maintained and today the state of its upkeep and appearance is grim. In their petition attorneys Ilan Sharkun and Boaz Greenberg, who represent the municipality, argue: "The property is very neglected, dirty and abandoned so that it constitutes a `wound in the heart of the city' and causes mortal damage to its appearance."
They describe the sequence of events that preceded this move, including an exchange of letters and contacts between the city and representatives of Zvidan Investments, and notices the municipality sent to the company in which it is repeatedly asked that the neglected property on Hayarkon Street be renovated. Sharkun and Greenberg note that at the end of last June, Zvidan contacted the municipality and claimed it could not rent the property as it is not possible to receive a business license. Therefore the company sought an assurance in principle that the building's tenant will receive a business license, as it will then be able to rent and solve the problem of renovation. The municipality rejected the proposal as an attempt to condition renovation on the granting of the license to a property that it perceives as problematic.
The municipality says the obligation to renovate is incumbent on the company under provision 54 of the municipal bylaw on maintaining order and cleanliness, and any request for a license will be discussed in a separate procedure and in a businesslike manner with no connection to the issue of the renovation.
The municipality has requested of the court that should the owner of the Yarkon Street property not renovate it within half a year, the municipality be granted the right to have renovation done and charge Zvidan Investments for the expense, while determining that appropriate securities be deposited with the municipality to ensure payment of the debt.
The Coliseum building is situated at a very strategic location, in the heart of Kikar Atarim, a focal point for tourism and an entertainment area, "such that it is fatally damaging to its appearance and image," wrote the attorneys for the municipality. "It is untenable that a situation in which a building located in the very heart of Tel Aviv, in one of the busiest and most visited places in the city, remains neglected and abandoned by its owners, constituting an aesthetic-visual blight for passersby on the street and above all for the tenants of the buildings adjacent to it, while the owner of the building is not lifting a finger in the matter and evading the municipality's requirements to renovate it."
In a conversation with Haaretz, the CEO of the municipal company Ezra Uvizzaron, Mark Kukun, defined the state of the building as "catastrophic." According to him, "At the building there are safety hazards and parts of it are in danger of collapse. This is an old building, from the 1960s, and therefore there is no alternative but to renovate it."
Attorney Ziv Ironi, who represents Zvidan Investments, says that he cannot respond on the matter as he has not yet received the municipality's request that has been submitted to the court.
Not only in South Tel Aviv
The situation at 83 Dizengoff Street, which is supposed to serve as a residential building, is not much better. In a proceeding that the municipality has initiated, it is asking the court to obligate the three private owners of the building to renovate it immediately or to allow the municipality to renovate the building itself and charge them with the expenses.
"This place looks as though an anti-tank unit has practiced on it. It is broken open to the four winds, something appalling," said the municipality's legal adviser, attorney Ben Ari.
The Ezra Uvizzaron company renovates about 100 buildings each year throughout Tel Aviv, altogether about 2,000 dwelling units. In all cases these renovations are not carried out under court order but rather at the desire of the property owners. According to Kukun, every year his company succeeds in renovating only a 10th of the buildings and structures in Tel Aviv that need renovating.
In the city, he says, there are about 20,000 structures that need a face-lift, as most of them were erected in the 1950s and the 1960s: "During that period the building standards were low. As time goes by, the number of buildings that will need renovation will increase." A large portion of these buildings is located in the southern part of the city, but in old Ramat Aviv, on Burla and Pasternak Streets, there are buildings that show signs of needing repainting.
At the Tel Aviv Municipality, they take pride in the long-term loans that are granted to house committees and property owners who comply with their requirements and agree to renovate their neglected properties. These are loans for up to NIS 27,000 per housing unit, which can be repaid in 48 payments, sometimes even more. "A renovation of this sort serves everyone's interests: The city is made more beautiful and also the owners of the property can enjoy a significant increase in its value," says Kukun. Despite the attractive loans, many property owners in South Tel Aviv and Jaffa, for example, are in no hurry to take them because of their difficult financial situation. "They are barely able to pay NIS 100 for the house committee," says a senior source at the municipality. "This is the main reason we are still not succeeding in renovating most of the properties in Tel Aviv requiring a face-lift."
The state's interest
As if this difficulty were not enough, the municipality reports a spreading phenomenon: property owners have "discovered" Provision 330 in the Municipalities Ordinance, whereby a building that is demolished or damaged and is therefore not inhabited, is not subject to municipal property tax.
Scores of property owners, tired of paying property tax, are intentionally neglecting their properties, the city suspects.
"The exemption from property tax is not limited in time, and the meaning of this provision is destructive from the urban point of view because it provides an economic incentive for neglecting buildings. The more you neglect, the more you benefit," says legal adviser Ben Ari.
A senior municipal source says there has been an attempt to spearhead a change in Knesset legislation on this issue, to limit the tax exemption on such properties to a period of four years on the assumption this will be sufficient time to renovate the property and renew its operation. However, according to this source, the move is encountering opposition from the Finance Ministry: "It turns out that the state has buildings that are in worse shape than many other neglected buildings in Tel Aviv. The state simply is not interested in having the exemption limited in time because the obligation to pay property tax will also apply to it."
Property tax aside, Ben Ari says that for months now a proposed law formulated by the TA Municipality has been lying around the Interior Ministry in Jerusalem. It is aimed at regularizing the matter of the renovation of neglected properties and at making explicitly clear the obligation of every property owner to see to it that the appearance of every building and its yard will be pleasant. Under the proposal, the local authority in whose boundaries a property in need of renovation is located will be able to renovate it under its own steam and charge the owners for the costs.
At present the local authorities have to deal with this only by means of municipal bylaws. "In most places in the country this mechanism does not work because of the relative weakness of the bylaws and the light punishment for those who break them. Primary legislation could well regularize this issue," says Ben Ari.