Following an ACRI petition paired with pressure from the courts, the Tel Aviv Municipality in October backed down from its previous stance and agreed to modify the conditions of the tender, whereby the winning developer will be obligated to market the housing units to the general public and to all interested parties.
Developers interested in competing for the tender on highly desirable central Tel Aviv real estate will be forbidden from doing so if their marketing campaigns are in any way discriminatory or exclusive. This includes exclusivity to specific groups of buyers, e.g. “Exclusively for the Hi-Tech Community” as well as exclusive marketing via a specific contractor. The Municipality along with the Wholesale Market Company made this announcement to the Court in the wake of ACRI’s petition, and it holds the weight of a binding court ruling.
The petition was submitted by ACRI Attorneys Gil Gan-Mor and Dan Yakir following the announcement by developers Raviv Tzoler and Dror Halevi of the New City Group that they would compete for the Wholesale Market tender with the stated intention of marketing the project exclusively to individuals employed in the fields of finance and hi-tech. In its petition, ACRI demanded that the Tel Aviv Municipality, the joint owner of the land along with the Wholesale Market Company, refrain from handing over the land to any developer with discriminatory marketing intentions and to explicitly protect against this in any purchase contract. Previously, the Municipality claimed that it was not responsible for the marketing policies of the individual tender competitors and did not see the harm in a specific body competing for the tender with “selective” policies.
Regarding the “Etrog Shuk” housing tender:
In a parallel development, a separate petition submitted by ACRI Attorney Gil Gan-Mor along with a coalition of Jaffa residents, Bimkom, and Rabbis for Human Rights caused the Supreme Court to issue a temporary injunction preventing the Israel Land Administration from transferring development rights to the B’Emunah Corporation, which had been awarded the tender to build a residential complex in the former “Etrog Shuk” compound in Jaffa. The petition was submitted following B’Emunah’s stated intention to market the residential units in a discriminatory manner, with the project reserved exclusively for members of the national-religious community.
