Will foreign workers save Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station? Perhaps. The fourth floor of the biggest white elephant in the nation has developed into a popular hang-out for Filipino workers, and entrepreneurs are pressuring to be allowed to create businesses that will exploit the site's relatively new success. Station manager Haim Avigal considers this trend a potential lifesaver for the flagging structure. It could even provide a solution for the thousands of meters that have remained vacant.
In the last two years, Asian food places, jewelry stores, supermarkets, employment offices, travel agencies and even matchmakers' offices have opened, for example, and transformed the fourth floor into a local "Chinatown."
"This is one of the most popular and active locations in the station," Avigal explains. "It's crowded during most hours of the day. On Saturday, for instance, the place is packed."
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As a result of the fourth floor's popularity, closing businesses demand $50,000-70,000 in vacating fees.
Telecommunications giant Celcom has posted signs in an array of languages in its newly opened digs in the complex. Other successful venues include a local postal branch and stores that sell pre-paid dialing cards.
Avigal hopes that the fourth floor and the "shoe shop boulevard," on the southern end of the third floor, will be the future of the bus station. "People don't visit these places because it's a bus terminal. They are attracted to the commercial establishments there," he says.
The Tel Aviv Central Bus Station has not enjoyed a single moment of peace in the 42 years since deceased contractor Arieh Filtz and the Kikar Levinsky Corporation initiated the project, in the 40 years since the cornerstone was laid, and the 14 years since it opened its doors. Construction was frozen when Kikar Levinsky declared bankruptcy during the years 1976-1982. The station was purchased by contractor Mordechai Yona in 1983 and operated by Tamhat (short for "New Tel Aviv Central Bus Station"), a public maintenance company, which he controls; it has accumulated losses that now total NIS 300 million.
"What were they thinking?" is a natural question to ask of the planners and developers, given the outlandish proportions of the site and the internal design problems which are at the root of the station's problems. The structure contains no less than 250,000 square meters of cement, and houses transportation, commercial and other services. Commercial sites cover some 80,000 square meters - an area equivalent to four major malls in Israel. Only 40,000 of those square meters are currently populated by about 700 active establishments; there is an equivalent number of empty, abandoned shops.
"A million visitors a day. The construction was based on that vision," Avigal says in response. Unfortunately, the number of visitors is actually about 10 percent of that "vision." Despite the fact that Avigal is correct when he says that, "there is no other mall with an equal number of visitors," visitors feel engulfed by the massive station and fail to provide the profits that would make it thrive.
This situation is only getting worse because the number of people who use public transportation is also decreasing. "They did not take the improved quality of life into account - the growing number of car owners and the dwindling status of public transportation in Israel," Avigal admits.
The highly problematic internal design also contributes to the station's woes. It is hard to find one's way about, and easy to get lost in the maze of tortuous halls. The 29 escalators, 13 elevators, dozens of rest rooms (more about this below), and the thousands of meters of passageways both disorient pedestrians and raise the high costs of maintenance, which requires 50 employees per shift and a total of 250 workers.
These operational costs figure into maintenance fees, charged to business owners, that reach NIS 48 ($11-12) per square meter. Though this deters many potential merchants, Avigal does not consider it a disadvantage. "A store in the station uses the infrastructure that the bus station provides. It does not have to pay for things like independent air-conditioning, thus saving thousands of shekels each month."
A portion of these operating costs is diverted to the maintenance of rest rooms. The streets that surround the station, particularly Tzemach David and Salame Streets, have been plagued by the rising stink of urine emanating from them for years. The stench usually comes from taxi drivers who do not find alternative facilities while waiting for passengers, on Tzemach David.
This same, unpleasant stink rises from the far reaches of the interior, as well.
"In the year and a half since I have been here, I have installed dozens of new toilets," Avigal reports. "But the problem with taxi drivers remains in the hands of the municipality. I clean the Tzemach David Street area despite the fact that it does not belong to me, but the municipality unfortunately doesn't do enough to address this issue."
The smell of urine may have diminished in the previous year, but it was anyway never the station's main problem. The main problem is the conflicting purposes of transportation and commercial services in the structure. Most visitors are passengers who are looking for the shortest way to enter or leave the terminal. Thus, there are areas that tens of thousands of passengers frequent each day, while other areas are virtually neglected. The former are located in central passageways on the third, fourth and sixth floors, and rent on those floors subsequently ranges between $50-60 per square meter. Thriving cafes on the sixth floor, like Aroma, pay rent that approaches $100-120 per square meter. But the farther one gets from escalators and central parts of the station, the more isolated one becomes. Rent rates decrease accordingly: In less desirable locations it may be as little as $10 per square meter.
Some sections - on the first, second, part of the third, and all of the fifth floors - are totally deserted. "The second floor was originally used as a terminal for local Dan bus lines. In 2000, Dan left those floors and took its lines up to the seventh floor and, in practice, they abandoned the stores and businesses on those floors, which lost all their foot traffic," Avigal explains.
The partially populated fifth floor is a mezzanine that never got off the commercial ground. Station management is attempting to draw businesses to that site by offering rock-bottom rental fees that are occasionally limited to the cost of maintenance. Avigal is targeting outlet stores. "This could be the largest outlet center in Israel," he says.
A solution was recently found for a small number of areas that were transformed into storage facilities. "I discovered that large companies have a hard time finding storage in Tel Aviv. There are 30-meter and 150- to 200-meter spaces available for rent. In addition, we are negotiating with a South African concern that is interested in renting 7,200 meters for the purpose of household storage," Avigal reveals.
If there is a future for the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, and Avigal is certain that there is, it lies in an attempt to separate the public's perception of the commercial aspect of the site from its role as a bus terminal. "I see this place as an enormous Turkish bazaar rather than just another mall. If you've seen one mall, you've seen them all, but I believe a time is coming in which you won't find any remaining empty space here," he says.
How? By means of three measures: promotion of the foreign workers' favorite kinds of places and completion of the "Chinatown-like" transformation; the determination of an alternative purpose for empty floors; and the realization of plans to build a 30,000-square-meter skyscraper on top of the station.
Avigal: "The potential here is huge and it will be partially realized when we implement the tower plan, which is currently in deliberation between us, the local planning council and the regional planning council. Think about how the population of workers that would fill a 30-floor tower like that would add to the number of visitors to the bus station."
This long-term optimism currently looks like a futuristic dream. The station's troubled past continues to knock at the door: Potential lawsuits by shop owners from the first, second and third floors, threaten to reach $50 million. Their attorneys, Boaz Ben Tzur and Haggai Levi, claim that their clients purchased stores, at full price, that were abandoned and now have no financial value. They maintain that the Tamhat company caused this miserable state of affairs by promoting the southern section of the station while abandoning the northern part, and by implementing the construction plan in a way that left only 40,000 square meters of commercial space.
Avigal rejects these claims: "This place was a white elephant for 20 years and millions of shekels were invested there, in development and maintenance. I have been here since 2006 and only Tamhat succeeded in turning these operational losses into profits of NIS 8 million. I hope that this year will be even better."
Meanwhile, few share Avigal's optimism. Some say that when Yona (whose name means "dove" in Hebrew) purchased the station, he received a white elephant figurine with a dove on its back. The gift-givers hoped that the figurine would represent Yona's transformation of the structure into a symbol of hope. But the white elephant is still alive and kicking. Perhaps the Filipinos will save the day.
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