The fight for Wadi Amik - "The Wadi is not our backyard, it is our property, the added value in living in Carmel"
The fight to preserve Wadi Amik as a green space for public needs - at its peak. Hundreds of residents have signed objections to construction in the Wadi territory when today, Sunday 31/7/22, is the deadline for submitting them.
The fight over Wadi Amik began in 2016, when the Haifa municipality sold the area. In 2019, the area was sold again, to an entrepreneur who requested to submit plans and change its designation - from "hot area" - intended for construction for public purposes - to an area intended for the construction of 78 housing units. Since then, the struggle has escalated.
Wadi Amik is a stream that descends on the western slope of Mount Carmel and is about 1.8 km long. Following the submission of the plans to change the area's zoning, hundreds of architects, planners and residents from Haifa who live nearby, or who have ties to the Nitzanim complex, for which the plan is proposed to build 78 housing units at Petah Wadi, joined Amik in the heart of the old Carmel, and also signed objections, which, as mentioned, the last date for submission is today. The objections are submitted through attorney Shamrit Golan, from the office of Herzog Fox Naaman & Co. attorneys, to the District Committee for Planning and Construction - Haifa District. (Deposited plan no. 304-0885624 (Haf/1033/c) - Nitsanim Complex Haifa)
The main objections:
- The undersigned are strongly opposed to the plan that turns public areas into residential areas without programmatic justification, and contrary to the instructions and planning principles of the outline plan of Haifa, Hef/2000.
- The plan harms the residents of the neighborhood and access to the open space and does not comply with the master plan for the preservation of the Haifa wetlands.
- The plan damages the special texture of the historic neighborhood that was recognized as worthy of preservation.
- The plan damages the view from the neighborhood and the view from the direction of the Wadi and from the direction of the nearby neighborhoods.
- The scope of construction proposed in the plan is excessive and damages the urban nature that characterizes the Carmel neighborhoods.
- The plan affects an environmentally sensitive area and is a habitat for flora, fauna and a community meeting point for the residents of the neighborhood and the surrounding area.
- The plan has no planning justification and its entire purpose is to achieve economic profit for the entrepreneur.
- Therefore, we strongly oppose the promotion of the program, and demand its rejection.
"The neighborhood will not benefit from this, on the contrary, it will lose"
In an interview with Lahi Fe, she says Tzala Kotler Hadri from the action committee to save Wadi Amik: "The area was classified as a nature reserve, until in the 70s it was classified as a brown area - an area intended for the construction of public buildings and its development for the benefit of public needs, and at that time it was determined that the area would be designated for an old people's home, but this did not come to fruition.
50 years have passed and the area was still intended for public needs and a nursing home, but nowadays nursing homes are not built in such areas and the preference is to build them in urban centers and central roads, so that it is easier for the residents.
Instead of thinking about what need the public has, the developer and the committee want to change the zoning of the area for residential construction. We, the residents, need to fight and preserve this area, if not as a green and open area in an era of climate crisis and yet want to develop it, then we need a rethink to understand what public needs exist and accordingly submit a request for changes and plans, and not jump straight into boutique towers that will not serve No one except the developer. The neighborhood will not benefit from this, on the contrary, it will only lose."
"The Wadi is not our backyard, on the contrary it is our property and the added value of living in Carmel"
"We are talking about a neighborhood within a neighborhood. About unusual construction and huge construction scopes of 78 housing units and a parking lot. This has ecological, environmental and neighborhood consequences. We are against usurping an area designated for public needs, "hot area", we cannot give up these areas. This is a species It is rare and there are hardly any anymore. The community uses this area and during the corona virus, we saw how much the community needed it and used it. There is a connection between the residents and the wadi. The wadi is not our backyard, on the contrary, it is the added value of living in Carmel. There is no need to build a wall between the neighborhood and the wadi. In addition, a variety of animals that live in this area and not just pigs, there is a whole world near the house and it should not be destroyed so easily. This is a green lung in the neighborhood and that is what makes Haifa.
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The richly vegetated wadis, left to escape between the dense residential neighborhoods of Haifa, are the ones that imbue the city with its spectacular ancient grandeur.
Although the long hand of the human herd managed to pollute here and there even these beautiful ravines and litter them with disgusting waste of every kind imaginable.
So a minority of caring citizens among the city's residents find themselves again and again in a constant struggle against the city authorities to save these natural coves from the destruction of the bulldozers, mixers and cranes.
Now the issue is the rescue of Wadi Amik...
Keep going like this, until you have no one left in Haifa except the broken, I moved to another place and it was the best thing I did, both greener and a functioning municipality
Haifa is destroying itself, like Ashdod. Capital-government relations. Too bad.
I'm still waiting for the day when they will connect all the disconnected neighborhoods (Dania, Ramat Begin, Azoza, Carmelia, Kabavir) that have only one exit from the neighborhood, towards the sea, and real public transportation will be possible.
Haifa's solution is to restore Hadar and other neighborhoods of Haifa, the city is crumbling, it can be turned into a beautiful city. and modern.
The land was leased by the municipality of Haifa for a specified purpose and for a specified period. If the objectives were not met, the lease must be canceled. Everything else is no longer important. The municipality officials will have to explain to the affected public why they did not cancel the lease.
The land was sold by Yona Yahav and was not leased.
The area was sold to Yuval Alon for twenty million NIS
Yuval Alon sold the area to another developer for forty-nine million NIS, without doing anything to the area
This is the behavior of the municipality that sold Benzid Lentils an area intended for a public building to an entrepreneur who wants to cut a coupon
at the expense of the public
It's good when we have a mayor with a doctorate in urban planning, that's what happens instead of canceling the decision, we want to implement a dream, we said
Instead of urban renewal of hundreds of railway housing buildings, a large part of them with defects and some defined as dangerous - all the planning bodies continue to give a hand to old, expensive and destructive plans of destroying the last Huada hills in our city, turning brownfields into public buildings that are much more needed today due to the population growth due to Tama 38 in the ridge neighborhoods and turning them into more residences (no less disturbing is the wild overcrowding in neighborhoods that were not designed for this and while trampling the little space left for public buildings in them..)
Destruction of wadis and the blocking of access to the wadis by greedy real estate developers who also damage the wadis during the construction process with dirt and rocks
And blocking access roads and blocking a view is a "granted right", remember? by huge walls without gaps and without proportions...
The destruction of Wadiyot will continue and continue if we do not stop and demand an end to wild construction that will destroy the western slopes: Wadi Margalit, Wadi Ahuza, and Wadi Givat Aizim. Everything will be uprooted and destroyed into neighborhoods with huge retaining walls, problematic topography, only private car poles that will require huge exchanges. We must stop this destruction and move to urban renewal only.
50 thousand housing units can be added!!!!!!!! In the urban renewal of the railway housing buildings whose residents are begging to advance the construction already, more and more green hills are being shaved. It is enough to see the terrible destruction of "Givat Zemar" or "Givat Beki".
A brown space for a public building should remain for public buildings.
In this area, it is possible to establish spacious kindergartens, another home for the elderly that Carmel longs for, or a community center that is not found in all these neighborhoods.
Enough Haifa Municipality Enough!!!!
District committee - one should also appeal to the Supreme Court about the trampling of the planning authorities in the country.
To uproot the calamity and rapacity of the Hotmails and the bypassing of the local committees.
It's just a shame you didn't mention that the plans are in the district (government) committee after they were rejected by the local (municipality) committee. Trending????
Who sold the land to developers? Did Haifa municipality sell the land?
A real estate bonanza at the expense of the public. Outrageous!