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Last update - 00:00 16/12/2007
As Be'er Sheva's malls are booming, small-business owners take the hit
By Mijal Grinberg
Tags: Old City, Sapir shoe store 

Be'er Sheva store owners Shimon Ben Abu and Gabriel Fartush have already heard the news: The nearby Neot Midbar hotel, one of only two left in the city, will be razed and replaced with a shopping mall - the city's eighth. The two men and other small-business owners are preparing for the financial damages the new project will cause.

"What can we do against it?" Fartush said, unable to hide a look of exasperation. "Every new business established in this city ruins us even further. This city isn't a tourist resort in need of so many commercial areas, yet the municipality is building more and more malls. It may be good for municipal property taxes, but it's not good for small businesses."

The Southern District's planning council decided Monday to approve plans to build the mall. A financial adviser for the project, Tamir Ben Shahar, told council members that the mall will increase household expenditure as well as the city's population.
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But Ziv Chen, an urban planner working for an environmental protection group, disagrees.

"Be'er Sheva is shooting itself in the foot by trying to establish a business center in the Negev Mall area," he said. "Be'er Sheva is overdeveloped; the city continues to grow while the population remains stagnant. We must bolster purchasing power at existing places and create community centers, not weaken them."

Be'er Sheva's Old City, some two and half kilometers from the planned mall, is comprised mostly of dilapidated buildings about a century old. It used to be the city's chief commercial area until the malls took away most its customers.

Ben Shahar is also bidding to devise a plan to rehabilitate the area. He sees no conflict of interest between building the new mall and rehabilitating the Old City.

"My vision for the Old City is to mix housing for younger residents with cultural institutions like museums, pubs and galleries as well as another commercial center. People will go to the Old City for a different shopping experience - they are not competing with each other," he said.

The concept of the new mall will be more akin to a community center, Ben Shahar adds. "Outside Israel they don't build shopping malls anymore but centers that offer free entertainment and culture. The mall will allocate land in favor of public activities that won't cost money - like a museum, a community center and other things."

For 20 years, Amos Peretz's Sapir shoe store has been located in the Old City's Jewish National Fund Street - a pedestrian zone.

"Each new mall hurts us," Peretz said as he arranged shoes on his store's shelves. "The city does not need more malls. We can invest resources to improve the situation in the Old City and increase the number of parking lots, repave sidewalks, build a roof over the pedestrian zone, place more lights and connect the facades of all the businesses. We talked about it a million times already but it is not being done."

A clutch of shoe stores are nestled on nearby Histadrut street. Their owners raise the same complaints: Sales are falling and there is not enough parking or adequate public transportation for the Old City. All are considering moving into new malls being built in the city.

Unusual in her optimism is Tami Bar-Lev, the owner of a store that sells and rents formal clothing. "It's true that every business comes at the expense of another," she said. "But we have regular customers who can find [products] that are not available in the malls. Besides, one's livelihood is in God's hands."

Meanwhile, malls are continuing to be built, and unlike the many found in the Old City, they are identical. "There are no attractions in the city," Fartush concluded mournfully. "No investment in entertainment, so they build malls instead, and that's where people go to have a good time."
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  1.   Beer-Sheva`s malls 15:02  |  W. Seidelman 16/12/07
  2.   new malls 19:29  |  adi 16/12/07
  3.   Beer Sheva 21:54  |  ami_korsunsky 16/12/07
  4.   Beer Sheva New Mall 21:45  |  zipi 18/12/07
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