Charles Clore Park is a park in southwest Tel Aviv located on the Tel Aviv-Yafo coastline on an area of about 120 dunams that was dried up from the sea. It is about a kilometer and a half long, and its width is between fifty and one hundred and fifty meters. The park was built in the early 1970s, renovated in the late first decade of the 21st century, and integrated with the promenade of the beaches of Tel Aviv. The park is named after philanthropist Charles Clore.
In 2019, the park held the Euro-Village Park as part of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest held in Tel Aviv.
History
The park is located near the beach next to which was the Manshiyah neighborhood, a neighborhood that was a northern suburb of Jaffa. In the place where the garden is located, a Jewish neighborhood called Yaffe Nof was established at the end of the 19th century. The neighborhood was the focus of shooting incidents as Arab snipers operated from it against the Jewish neighborhoods of Tel Aviv before the Israeli War of Independence. During the war, the houses and infrastructure of the neighborhood were damaged, but despite this, new immigrants entered the neighborhood, and it became a dense slum.
In the fifties and sixties, a discussion took place regarding the future of the neighborhood. In 1963 it was eventually decided to evacuate and demolish the neighborhood. Towards the end of the 1960s, the evacuation of the residents was completed, and the demolition of the neighborhood’s homes began. The contractors who demolished the neighborhood houses did not evacuate the construction debris but pushed it to the nearest possible place — into the sea. Huge amounts of construction debris soon accumulated on the beach and in the sea. The municipality was required to clean the beach, but it turned out that it was cheaper to cover the debris with dirt and plant grass on it. It was therefore decided to establish a park in this location, on top of the ruins, and even to expand the area dried up by the sea by the building debris. The result is that Charles Clore Park has been established, but on the other hand, the residents of Tel Aviv have lost a long stretch of shore that could have been used as a bathing beach. Only in the southern part of the park is there a narrow and short strip of beach.
After it was decided to establish a park on the site, the landscape architect and poet A. Hillel was hired to plan the park. He had to deal with the constraints of a long, narrow park, with dirt soil that covers the ruins, which do not allow trees to be planted but only grass and low shrubs. There is also a limit due to sea winds and shards of salt. Therefore, he decided to construct low hills in the place, to create a cover for the bushes from the winds and the shards of saltwater. Palm and Tamarix trees were also planted on the eastern side of the park (in an area that is not a dry sea area).
Most of the park’s area is covered with grass and coastal shrubs. On the western side, along the new water line, a cladding wall wrapped in rocks (aimed at preventing the park’s infrastructure from being swept into the sea) was erected. A wide promenade was built next to the wall. Due to the location of the wall and the fact that the promenade is located directly on the shoreline, strong waves often crash on it. On the other hand, it made the site quite a popular fishing location.
In 1971, Charles Clore – a British financier, retail and property magnate, and philanthropist – donated one million pounds to build the park.
The Charles Clore Park
The park was opened to the public in 1974. In the center of the park, a playground facility in the shape of a whale was placed, which symbolized the whale that ejected the prophet Jonah to the shore of Jaffa, as well as the location of the park between Jaffa and Tel Aviv. This facility soon became popular with children and became a symbol of the park. After it became obsolete and began to crumble, it was replaced in the mid-1980s by “Adventure Garden” style wooden facilities, which were also replaced by state-of-the-art playground facilities in the first decade of the 21st century.
Many sculptures have also been placed in the park, including the sculpture “Woman Against the Wind” by Ilana Gur, which was transferred to it from its previous location in London Square. In the south of the park, the Beit Gidi Museum was established to document the battle for the conquest of Jaffa and Manshiyah. The museum was established in the only building left of the Manshiyah neighborhood, except the Hassan Beck Mosque, and was opened to the public in 1983. As part of the building’s preparatory work, glass panels were added based on the stone walls. This element creates for the building a unique but controversial shape of new versus old.
The park was liked by both the residents of Tel Aviv and the residents of Jaffa. In contrast, the project to build the business center in Manshiya was stopped after several towers (the textile house complex) were built, as market forces overcame the planners, and the old business center expanded east, towards the Ayalon axis and not west. Another result was that the Neve Tzedek neighborhood was restored instead of being demolished, and became a sought-after residential neighborhood.
At the end of the 1990s, the park was connected directly to Jaffa, when the southern promenade (the “Jaffa Gate” promenade and the “Sea Wall” promenade) was built, which leads from it to the port of Jaffa. Today, the Tel Aviv Municipality is promoting plans to demolish the “Dolphinarium” complex adjacent to the park to the north and to connect it directly to the promenade of central Tel Aviv.
In November 2007, the park began a thorough renovation process, which lasted until 2009, and included in addition to renewing the park’s infrastructure also significant changes, such as flattening the hills (to create a sea view from all over the garden) and building an eastern promenade, in addition to the existing western promenade.
