Hagag Group Real Estate Development Ltd. (TASE: HGG) will build a new hotel in Herzliya. The Hamarina group, controlled by Hagag, and the Cohen brothers yesterday submitted a new urban building plan to the Herzliya Local Planning and Building Commission for construction of a hotel near the Herzliya marina. The group acquired the 10-dunam (2.5-acre) lot, located four meters from the sea, from Azorim Investment, Development and Construction Ltd. (TASE: AZRM) two years ago for NIS 78 million, with the purchase being completed in January 2017. The lot includes approved construction rights for 10,000 square meters of hotel space. The plan submitted yesterday, designed by architect Rani Ziss and international hotel architect David Rockwell, includes an increase in construction rights to 25,000 square meters. The project will be first in Israel by Rockwell, who designed the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas and other hotels around the world belonging to the W Hotels and Nuvo Hotel chains.
The plan presented today at a press conference held in the Herzliya marina by Hagag included construction of a luxury hotel with 180 suites in separate six-storey buildings. The hotel's main swimming pool will be between the two buildings, and a private pool will also be attached to some of the suites. The plan also includes a special anchorage for yachts at the entrance to the hotel that will provide access to the hotel by yacht from anywhere in the world. 130 of the 180 suites will be offered for sale on a vacation apartments format, and their owners can live in them for limited periods of a few months a year in accordance with the law, similar to the vacation apartments in the nearby Ritz Carlton Hotel above the Arena shopping mall. The hotel contains both hotel rooms and vacation apartments.
Yigal Zemach, a special consultant for the project, said, "Today, if you aren't doing a stunning hotel project, people have no reason to go there. Like the Meier on Rothschild skyscraper, in which residential apartments are not measured according to the price per square meter, the consideration in this project will not be price. The trick is to avoid being just another hotel on a booking website - to create something special at a fair price that people will come to because it is different, whether it is a third-floor suite, a bar we may put on the roof, or access to the hotel from the sea by yacht." Zemach added that the public would have access to the public spaces in the hotel.
Sources inform "Globes" that professional parties in the Herzliya municipality were positively impressed by the plan, which has only just been presented and is yet to be discussed. Construction of the hotel is expected to be finished in four years.
Hagag has two other hotel projects on lots owned by the group: one in the Tel Aviv port and the second on Shadal Street near Rothschild Boulevard.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on January 16, 2018
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