(JNi.media) Israel will invest more than $250 million in turning the community of Harish into the first new city to be built since the 1990s, Israeli media reported Wednesday. According to a multi-year plan to be submitted to the Netanyahu cabinet at its next meeting, Harish will be defined as “a national priority community” for the next four years. A special hub will be established to serve the tens of thousands of new residents, and the Ministry of Construction and Housing will boost the size of the personnel assigned to the new project. Harish will be connected to the main transportation routes and will have a new transit system.
To get an idea of the sheer ambition of the new project: currently there are about 300 families living in Harish, and the plan calls for more than 50,000 residents there by 2020.
Harish is a municipality in the district of Haifa in Israel, located in northwestern Samaria, on a par with Hadera, just west of the “green line” where the northern belly of Judea and Samaria pushes in to about 15 miles in from the coast. It was founded in the 1980s as Kibbutz Harish, at an altitude of 330 feet above sea level, which makes for a refreshing breeze each afternoon. The kibbutz was abandoned in 1993, except for a Border Guard detachment that camped there. On the lands of the abandoned kibbutz the Housing Ministry established a new community, also named Harish, of about 300 dwelling units. The Ministry of Housing has invested heavily in the local infrastructure and in planning, but the development endeavor has failed. Most of the streets are empty, and the local population is weak.
The cabinet’s decision requires government offices to weigh Harish’s entitlements not based on its demographics at the beginning, but rather at the end of each year, greatly improving the new city’s ability to manage the absorption of new residents before they actually arrive.
Among other things, the plan calls for the establishment of 400 classrooms and day care centers; a new community service center; family health centers (MCHC); a crisis center that will include a police, fire and rescue station, as well as an emergency operating center; reinforcing social services to strengthen the community and dealing with the difficulties of transition; developing and promoting transportation access to Harish via connections with highways 444, 65 and 9, including interchanges and grade separations, and paving route 611; and developing and promoting public transport, including increasing bus routes to employment centers and adding a station on the railway.
Prices at this point are very attractive, according to commercials: around $200,000 for 4-room apartments with the kind of view of the Mediterranean that’ll make you cry in your Chardonnay on your terrace.