Calcalist, Shlomit Tzur, 01.07.2021
The Cinema City complex in western Rishon Lezion will become a commercial and hotel employment center: Gazit Globe is starting work on the construction of an employment tower above the complex. The tower will include 32 floors and 64,000 square meters of employment space. At the same time, the company is promoting a plan for three more towers to be built above the mall. The name of the complex will become G City.
This morning (Thursday), a cornerstone laying ceremony was held in the presence of the Mayor of Rishon Lezion, Raz Kinstlich, and the CEO of Gazit Globe, Haim Katzman
The plan to add the tower, prepared by architect Moshe Tzur, was approved in 2019. Calcalist has learned that the company is currently in the midst of a planning process to convert 6 of the 32 approved floors in the tower to a hotel destination, and is even in contact with a hotel chain that will rent and manage the hotel areas in the tower. The plan to change the designation of the 6-story tower was submitted to objections by the Central District Planning and Building Commission last January. The tower will be built with an investment of NIS 740 million, and is expected to be inhabited at the end of 2025. The Cinema City complex in Rishon Lezion will become a commercial, commercial and hotel employment center.
"It does not make sense for a city of 250,000 residents, most of whom work outside the city," Katzman said at the ceremony. "We will ensure that not only do the residents of the city have jobs in their city of residence, but also that the residents of Tel Aviv come to work in a complex that is a 17-minute drive from Tel Aviv."
The Cinema City complex is known as a leisure complex, and includes extensive areas of commerce and cinemas. Upon completion of the construction of the tower, the complex will become a complex that also includes employment and tourism. The land on Tehanei Tehran Street, on which the Cinema City complex was established, was purchased by Gazit Globe in the years 2007-2006, and the complex was opened to the public in 2010. In 2019, 12 million people visited the Cinema City complex.
"We believe in the office market even after the Corona," Oren Hod, deputy CEO of Gazit Globe, told Calcalist. The entire complex is going to change its face and become an employment and leisure complex, and large companies will be able to find entire floors for rent. It is advantageous to choose a workplace whose offices are located above an active mall. We believe that even a hotel within a complex of commerce and offices will be fully occupied and will bring the complex to be active around the clock. It should be remembered that the place is a few kilometers from the sea, there is the College of Management nearby, and Assuta Medical Center, and thanks to the complex there will be a green line station for light rail that you get on and after a few stops get off on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv. That is why I believe that the hotel will not just be a business hotel. "
In the past year, the Rishon Lezion Municipality has been promoting a campaign to market plots in the Alef complex located west of the Cinema City complex, where hundreds of thousands of square meters of offices are currently being built, including Discount Bank headquarters and Phoenix Insurance Company headquarters. Against the background of the figure according to which more than 60% of the city's residents work in the city, when the municipality has set itself the goal of lowering the figure significantly, by creating jobs in the city area.
"Everyone is coming to Rishon Lezion," said Mayor Kinstlich. "38% of Discount Bank's staff are residents of the city, who today build the bank's headquarters in the Alef compound. I was sorry that Bank Hapoalim decided to set up its headquarters in Tel Aviv. I told the bank's CEO, if you do not want to come to Rishon Lezion, do not come. But do not go to Tel Aviv. You will even go to Or Yehuda. Choosing Tel Aviv did not help the State of Israel. "