NEW BUILDINGS ― NEW QUALITY
The Ministry of Public Security’s Projects Unit

When the old national police headquarters building in Jaffa was demolished four years ago it marked the end of another chapter in Israel Police (IP) history. The old building that had served the IP for fifty years made way not only for a new structure but a new, 21st-century, organizational concept of policing. No more of units scattered all across the metropolis. Now a single central modern precinct, housing the latest technologies, computerized from top to bottom and concentrating in one place almost every policing function required by a great city and its environs stood in place.

Mor Architects’ new six-storey, 27,000 square-meter building contains some one thousand offices for the 1,200 police officers serving there, a 300-seat auditorium, a shooting range, fitness room, club-lounges, kitchen and cafeteria, a gas station, two underground car-parks, a clinic serving the whole district and a synagogue. All the stories of the building look onto a large internal courtyard-cum-parade ground, while the outside windows offer panoramas across the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

To blend in with the local Jaffa building style, the new district HQ, with its main entrance on a public square, is faced on all sides in sandstone and granite. The antenna tower on the roof is shaped to fit into to the local church-dominated skyline.

Within the new building are the Tel Aviv District HQ, the District’s Central Unit, Traffic Department, Bomb Disposal and Fraud Units, and the Yiftakh Sub-District police station. The new HQ, named for former Police Commissioner David Kraus, was formally opened in June 2005, in the presence of a large gathering that included the Minister of Public Security and the current Commissioner. The ceremony set the seal on a protracted seven-year long period of planning, negotiations and implementation.

It all began with a package deal hammered out between the Ministry of Public Security’s Projects Unit, the IP, the Ministry of Finance and the Israel Lands Administration, whereby, in return for the IP vacating its old premises scattered around Tel Aviv-Jaffa, it would be given an appropriate budget for constructing a single new block capable of meeting all its current and foreseeable needs.  This sort of deal is typical of the new government strategy of vacating valuable under-exploited sites -- in return for an alternative site or construction grant. The strategy allows the vacated sites to be re-zoned for residential, commercial or public use and in this way is helping to modernize and modify our old townscapes.

The complexity of the package eventually agreed upon, and the necessarily complex negotiations that it took to tie it up, clearly exemplify the Projects Unit’s areas of expertise and responsibility. This was the first such deal that the IP had been a partner to, both in terms of the number of properties vacated and the amount of money involved. All the elements normally entailed in a large-scale real estate transaction were present: identifying properties suitable for vacating, making a formal valuation, drawing up a list of the functions to be replaced, financial analysis, devising a new construction program, negotiating the agreement, calculating the budget required, drawing up an appropriate timeline, getting approval for the construction plans and, finally, overseeing the physical and financial elements of constructing the replacement building.

The Projects Unit, set up only eight years ago, comprises four staffers headed by an IP Brigadier-General. Under the terms of its job description, the unit oversees Ministry construction policy, compiles the Ministry’s multi-year building plan and the subsequent annual plans, is responsible for building new and upgrading current Israel Police and Israel Prison Service (IPS) facilities, and for administering the budgets allocated to these projects. It has a hand in every stage of a project, from the development of the initial idea, through choosing the location, finding a site, negotiating with central and local government authorities, allocating a budget, and overseeing construction through to completion – at every stage coordinating its work with the relevant IP and IPS officials. Since its own establishment, the Projects Unit has been a partner in the construction or renovation of dozens of buildings in all parts of the country. It has helped construct HQ complexes, police stations, Border Guard bases and prisons; renovate remand centers and adapt IP facilities for access by the disabled.

Unit Director, Brig.-Gen. Ya’akov Amar, views the Unit’s key achievement in its successful upgrading of old IP buildings, at one stroke improving working conditions for staff and service to the members of the public coming to the buildings. Cell living conditions in both prisons and detention centers have also been brought into line with legal requirements. The work of the Unit proves, he says, that visions can be made into reality, that new buildings can change organizational concepts and patterns of work, while IP and IPS staffers, as well as prisoners and detainees, are provided better work and living conditions, and relations with the public are put on a stronger basis.

Written by Hannit Lewkowicz, Coordinator, Projects Unit, Ministry of Public Security