{"value"=>"<p>Correspondence, minutes, reports, cables, maps, drawings. Some material in German.</p> <p>The Haifa Bay Development Company was a Palestine corporation, with most of its stock held by the American Zion Commonwealth. It was formed for the purpose of developing a large stretch of land lying along the coast from the City of Haifa to the Bay of Acre, significantly extending development possibilities for the country as a whole. The largest industrial concerns in the country at that time were situated on adjoining land, and it seemed that further industrial development in Palestine would be in the direction of the Haifa Bay region.</p> <p>Around 1927, PEC, interested in these larger development possibilities as they related to the country's economic future, took up the question of acquiring an option on some unsold land held by Haifa Bay Development Company. Then, in 1928, the company defaulted on its mortgage with the region's Arab landowners. PEC made the necessary payments, retaining approximately 5,000 dunams (one dunam equals 1,000 square meters) for industrial and residential development, and ceded the remainder to the Jewish National Fund, taking a mortgage in payment. The land retained by PEC was the heart of Haifa's developing industrial section.</p> <p>Together, the two companies made thousands of swampy and malarial acres available for settlement by drainage and amelioration. PEC formed a wholly owned subsidiary (also in 1928), Bayside Land Corporation, Ltd., to hold title to the land and carry on its development.</p>"}