Haifa District Committee Rejects 1,200-Unit Plan on Kiryat Bialik's Last Land Reserve

The Haifa District Planning and Building Committee on Sunday adopted the position of the Kiryat Bialik municipality and rejected a privately initiated plan for about 1,200 housing units on roughly 41.5 dunams of farmland between HaEshel Street and Road 22 in the city's east. The committee ruled that advancing a detailed plan on a limited part of the area could complicate and even frustrate planning of the city's last land reserve, which must be planned as a single whole with comprehensive answers for drainage, sewage, high-voltage lines, connections to regional and local transport systems, public space and employment areas. It also found that the plan relied on access from a small local street unsuited to 1,200 added homes, a position reinforced by the Transportation Ministry's representative, while the Ma'ayanot Hof water corporation said it could not approve the plan at this stage without an arranged sewage solution. Mayor Eli Dukorsky said the eastern lands are the city's planning reserve for the coming generations, and that Kiryat Bialik already holds a stock of about 12,000 approved housing units while advancing urban renewal plans in several compounds.