Finally Ramla's problems have been solved. Forget about its stronger residents fleeing to other cities, or the fact that the average monthly salary in the city is only NIS 6,200 and that the number of 12th graders earning their matriculation certificate barely crosses the 50% threshold, and that the city ranks in the fourth bottom rung out of ten on the socio-economic scale, even though it is just a 20-minute commute from Tel Aviv.
But finally Ramla has an Azrieli Group Ltd. (TASE: AZRG) shopping mall covering 23,000 square meters with 150 stores. And as Azrieli Group chair Danna Azrieli said at the mall's festive opening last week, "This mall will give a new experience to Ramla to real estate improvement, and environmental change."
Experience? Improvement? Change? One of the charms that Ramla still has (and yes it does have a few charms) and that did give it a chance to get back on the right track, was connected to the fact that until now it didn't have a mall that sucked all the trade off the streets. This has already happened in Ramla to offices when the government center was opened a few years ago. See what will be left of the Ramla-Lod street market brand that successfully tours the country each week.
And make no mistake, the local traders on the city's streets will find it very difficult to survive now that they are pitted against Fox and Castro in the new mall.
We aren't of course saying anything new. We can see what has happened to the stores in the streets of Haifa and Petah Tikva after mega-malls opened there.
Last night Danna Azrieli celebrated the opening of a second floor at the Ayalon Mall in Ramat Gan, 30 years after her late father David Azrieli made history by opening it as the first mall in Israel.
Not long ago we asked Ramat Gan city engineer Haim Cohen, who back in the 1980s was manager of the city's planning department what was his biggest-ever planning mistake. The Ayalon Mall, he answered, the biggest pride and joy of David Azrieli and his daughter Danna.
He admitted, "If I had known just how hard the mall was going to hit commercial life on Herzl and Bialik Streets, then I wouldn't have worked towards construction of the mall because it emptied the city's streets and allowed more inferior and poorer activities to creep into the city's center. It's bad because a mall is thought of as successful if people buy more than they need, and it raises the cost of living and reduces available expenditure. No mall has ever caused possible development around it."
So true it is impossible to ignore an asset that yields millions of shekels annually in municipal taxes. No doubt the new Azrieli mall in Ramla will give a boost to the emptying coffers of the local municipality.
But a boost for the city? Not really. And at the end of the day don't forget, we are talking about a mall not a new university for Ramla or an Intel fab.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 10, 2015
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