According to a plan deposited recently with the Tel Aviv District Planning and Building Committee for public objections, a fourth Azrieli tower is to be erected.
By GIL STERN STERN ZOHARUpdated: MARCH 29, 2016 19:03
Plans are under way to build an 85-story tower adjoining Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Center.When architect Moshe Zur’s skyscraper is completed, the tower – to be erected on the site of the Yediot Aharonot building on Menachem Begin Boulevard and Noah Mozes Street – will be the tallest in the country, surpassing the 68-story Moshe Aviv Tower in Ramat Gan. By contrast, the Shalom Meir Tower – Israel’s first skyscraper, completed in 1965 – stands 34 stories tall.According to a plan deposited recently with the Tel Aviv District Planning and Building Committee for public objections, the fourth tower in the Azrieli Center complex will sprawl over 4 hectares, and will include 112,000 sq.m. of commercial space, 40 business floors, 200 protected housing units, and 300 more small- and medium-sized housing units, in addition to public space.The Azrieli Group Ltd. bought the former site of the daily newspaper three years ago for NIS 374 million.Canadian-Israeli developer David Azrieli (1922-2014) revolutionized retailing in Israel when he opened the country’s first North American-style mall in Ramat Gan in 1984. The concept was so radical the Polish-born Holocaust survivor had to coin a Hebrew word, kenyon, from “buy” and “parking lot.” The mall, called Kenyon Ayalon, alludes to the valley where Saul and Jonathan smote the Philistines (I Samuel 14:31).Azrieli followed that initial success with malls in Beersheba, Jerusalem and Haifa, where he had studied architecture at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology before moving to Canada in 1954.Now his signature project, the Tel Aviv Azrieli Center, is to be graced by a fourth tower.