Motti Landa and his partners have in recent months been conducting negotiations for the sale of Ussishkin House at 52 Hayarkon St., Tel-Aviv, to the Palestinian Authority - so group representatives have confirmed to "Globes". They said Faisal Husseini had already inspected the premises. The owners are asking $10 million for the 2,000 sq.m. building. They maintain that when ITV reported that the building was up for sale, prominent businessmen offered to purchase it, as also did the Jewish National Fund.
Ussishkin House, standing on a privately-owned 736 sq.m. lot, is owned by Landa (40%), Aryeh Langlive, Yaakov Eyal and architect Binyamin Muchevsky, 20% each. They purchased the building in 1992, through a company owned by them (currently in voluntary liquidation), from Menahem Ussishkin’s grandson David Ussishkin, at an undisclosed price. In recent years, they invested some $4 million in renovating and preserving the building and adding another two storeys. The bulk of the investment was financed by a loan from Bank Hapoalim. The building has a 285 sq.m. commercial storey, twelve medium-size apartments and four 115 sq.m. penthouses. The developers wish to sell some of the apartments, or the building as a single unit, to repay the debt to Bank Hapoalim and realise profits.
Israel Land Administration director-general Avi Drexler told "Globes" at the end of the week: "A certain source reported to Minister of National Infrastructures Ariel Sharon, four months ago, that the owners were negotiating the sale of the building to the Palestinian Authority. They asked me to find out. I was not presented with any factual material confirming this. This may be a case of investors who went into a real estate deal and are hoping the ILA will help them extricate themselves from it. We will not do that. The ILA is not a safety net for private entrepreneurs". JNF confirmed that it was exploring the possible purchase of the building.
The owners assess that they can sell the penthouses for $700,000 to $1.1 million each, and that the three-room apartments will go for $300,000 - 600,000, fetching altogether $10 million. The owners can sell the apartments piecemeal without paying tax. They are prepared to sell the building as a single unit, for use as offices (the town building scheme permits this), at an identical price. The building is unique in that it faces the sea, the Opera towers and the Allenby mall.
The owners say they offered to sell or rent all or part of the building to the Shimon Peres Peace Centre, the Abulafia family of Jaffa, the Embassy of India (leasehold), Continental Airline (part of the building under leasehold), the Embassy of Colombia, Bank of Jerusalem (a single storey). All these contacts came to nothing.
Landa and Langlive are also partners in lots in Kiryat Ata and Beit Dagan and in a residential building in Tel-Aviv. Eyal is the owner of a building on Buddenheimer St., Tel-Aviv, which is leased to the Embassy of Greece.
Menahem Ussishkin, a Zionist leader and Chairman of the Jewish National Fund, built Ussishkin House for residential purposes in 1922. His family inherited it on his death in 1941.
Published by Israel's Business Arena July 4, 1999