A few months ago, nearly twenty years after developer Gil Dankner (a cousin of Nochi and Dan Dankner) built the Castra Center mall in Haifa at an investment of some NIS 200 million, he sold it to a consortium of buyers for a quarter of that amount, about NIS 50 million.
Among the prominent names in the consortium are Dror Gad and Shmuel Sayad, who head real estate investment trust Reit 1; Yossi and David Reznik of the accounting firm Reznik Paz Nevo & Co., one of the leading players in the local trust services market; and Udi Barzilai, a leading tax lawyer in Israel.
The consortium also includes Holon Motors, which operates showrooms for the vehicle industry and is active in other areas of real estate as well.
As far as is known, the buyer consortium, consisting of twenty investors, is led by a private real estate developer who sees the main potential of the purchased asset in additional building rights approved for it allowing the construction of two towers for offices and sheltered housing on the site.
The sale of the mall was reported in the local press in Haifa, without the names of the buyers and the amount paid. A few years ago, insurance company The Phoenix Holdings Ltd. (TASE: PHOE1;PHOE5) reportedly examined the possibility of purchasing the mall, but the deal did not go ahead.
The Castra Center, located in the southern approaches to Haifa, had difficulty in getting off the ground commercially after it opened in early 2001. Shortly after the opening came a tough period for Israel, economically and security-wise. Added to this were severe management deficiencies, and competition from the growing number of malls in Haifa, among them Azrieli Group Ltd.'s (TASE: AZRG) Haifa Mall nearby. The Castra Center's activity did not improve markedly in the following years either.
The Castra Center is an unusual building, integrating works of Austrian-Jewish artist Erich Brauer in its structure. The concept behind it was a combination of commerce with an entertainment and arts center. Explaining the failure of the concept a few years after the mall opened, Gil Dankner said in an interview with "Globes": "The situation in the country changed, and it's impossible to compare the reality that prevailed here in 1997, when the mall was planned, with the situation now (in 2002, A.L.). We expected Israel to be flooded with tourists, and we knew from experience that architecture is an attraction in itself."
Dankner holds another well-known property in Haifa - the legendary casino building located in the Bat Galim district near the beach, which has stood neglected for two decades. The structure was built in the 1930s, during the period of the British mandate, and was gradually abandoned. A few years after buying it, Dankner received a building permit through Dor Chemicals to convert the site into a boutique hotel, and he is believed to be seeking a buyer for this property as well.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 15, 2019
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