Derech Ha'Atsmaat Street in Haifa started out as a fancy street, was abandoned for several decades and today it stars again
Independence Street is one of Haifa's oldest streets. Until 1951, the street was called "Kings' Road". Mayor Abba Khushi changed the names of the streets to Hebrew names and that's how Independence Street got its name. The street was designed by the British in the 20s of the last century, and the street developed hand in hand with the nearby Haifa port.
drying up the sea
In order to pave Independence Street in 1933, it was necessary to dry the sea water, so the coastline was moved 200 m to the north in order to be able to pave the road. The area that was dried was used for both the port and the paving of the street. There was a debate as to whether to pave a street that was 15 m or 30 m wide and in the end it was decided that a street that was 30 m wide was better, the width of Independence Street to this day. After its construction, the street was considered the central business street of Haifa, and it actually was like that until the 70s.
Hadar and the malls
Since the 70s, the Hadar neighborhood began to develop as a center of businesses and shops, after which the shopping malls burst into our lives with a loud fanfare, and the glow of the lower city faded, including the glow of Ha-Atsamut Street.
Courts and government offices
About 20 years ago, no one thought of coming to Ha-Atzmaat Street, and in general to the lower city, unless they had to buy something in one of the stores, such as Michelin sports, for example, or to buy cheap branded jeans. Those who did come were the American sailors, whose ship was anchored in the port of Haifa. One of the things that caused the change was the decision of the previous mayor to move the government offices and the courts from the Hadar neighborhood to the lower city and as soon as the courts moved to the lower city, many law offices were opened in close proximity to him to be near them. In addition to this, many lawyers already eat lunch or drink coffee in the area between hearings, or simply because it is near their office. Of course, there are law offices in the estate and Hadar as well, but much less than before.
Old and new
There are several old restaurants and clubs in the lower city, where people used to hang out 40 and 50 years ago, the oldest of them all is of course the beer fountain. There is also a club on Natanzon Street that, even before the facelift in the lower city, attracted people to hang out. At the same time, it is impossible to compare what is happening today on Jaffa Street with what was there about 30 years ago.
coffee and cake
The "Shani" bakery on Hatzamtu Street has existed since the 60s. The cafe offers pastries and cakes alongside breakfast and opens in the early morning hours. It is possible to sit in the cafe and enjoy the fast service and food or come and pick up tempting baked goods at home. Long after that, another cafe opened, adjacent to the second one, Ava, which specializes in quality coffee. In recent years, after the massive renovation, many more restaurants and cafes have opened on the street and now it is not uncommon to see families and couples starting the morning with one of the cakes made in the new cafes on the street.
Fine cuisine
One of the cafes, which is a great success on Independence Street, and is crowded at all hours of the day and at night is Cremerie de l'Eclair. The French pastry shop offers a huge variety of cakes, Italian ice cream, coquilida in various flavors, mini pies and potpourri and much more sweets.
Another restaurant at the end of Independence Street is the Ein Havadi restaurant. This is a Lebanese restaurant, what makes it special is that it has gluten-free food, which is suitable for celiac patients. From the pita to the chips, those who cannot eat gluten will enjoy a good meal with wholehearted service.
A new place that offers knapa has also opened on Hatzamtu Street and is called Knapa De Luxe. The place offers an excellent knapa along with other desserts and black coffee on the side. The owner of the Lux restaurant decided to open another place for Kenapa, which is right next to the successful restaurant on Hamam Street.
Downtown boom
Today's Independence Street is part of the flourishing of the entire downtown and the Turkish market. The previous mayor, Yona Yahav, decided to do a "face lift" to the lower city and invested tens of millions of shekels in a massive renovation of its streets and the Turkish market. The person who was responsible for the renovation and even moved to live in the lower city in order to supervise the activity, is Tzachi Tarno. The results were not long in coming.
Today there are dozens of restaurants, pubs and cafes in the lower city, in the evenings on the weekends (and not only on the weekends) it is very difficult to find parking there. Old places alongside places that have just opened offer the Haifa audience alcohol, coffee, meat, fish and the latest dishes, and the Haifa people vote with their feet and come.
there's hope
If we look at the condition of the lower city and Independence Street as they were in the 80s and 90s of the last century and as they are today, we can feel quite a bit of hope for other neighborhoods in the city as well. There is no doubt that massive financial investment and effort can do wonders in any neighborhood. All it takes is someone to believe it's possible.
Haifa Haifa
A city with a bottom
Haifa Haifa
A city with a future…
The huge parking lot near Kiryat Havlat - owned by Zim / the Ofer family / Idan Ofer or the devil knows who. In every city center in the world, a huge project has already been built there: a magnificent shopping center that you can walk through, above it a residential tower, an office tower, a hotel tower...
I know the programs in it and nothing happens. Simply nothing has happened in Haifa for 20 years. Whoever praises Yahav is simply blind. Independence Street is dead, completely dead. For rent signs, outdated stores, no entrepreneurs, no cranes. They just don't build in the downtown area. I would expect that in a "swing" as some of the comments here want us to believe, entrepreneurs would come and build: a tower above the Bezeq switchboard, towers in the huge parking lot, more hotels. Fatal chains. atlas. Brown. There were many of them on buildings for the construction of hotels in the lively area.
Gentlemen, this is not happening, internalize the magnitude of the failure. The municipality of Haifa poured 100 million shekels, huge sums, and nothing happens. The Shemi Bar building stands abandoned. And in front of it is an abandoned 9-story building. The 'Complex 21' gallery project disappeared as if it had never been. 3-4 galleries were closed. Jaffa Street, apart from the old commercial center, is completely deserted at night and scary to walk along. And there is no reason why, it is all dark and closed. what are you talking about..
Yes, there are some restaurants and pubs that work on Thursday-Friday night. Is this enough for the renewal of the district?
As I have known Ha-Atsamat Street since the age of 15, today I am 73 years old. I would like to point out that the golden age of the street was in the 50s and 60s. Today, despite the attempts to revive it, the street is a shadow of the past. There used to be no substitute for the street. It was the city of Haifa. Today, with the development of shopping malls And the development of the Kariyas, which were then the Safar region, the entire center of gravity migrated to the east. And Hadar, which was alive and vibrant today, is dying. The municipality of Haifa did not know how to take care of the city and caused its decline. The nice article does not present the bitter reality of a sinking city.
The center of gravity moved east. Chutzot Hamafetz - was once one of the largest Vulcan factories in the Haifa Bay.
The Ofer family from Lisron and Ashstrom came and turned the place into a 100 square meter mall, the largest mall in Israel
Obviously he will empty the downtown. And that's how they added malls in Bar Yehuda in Nesher, and added the malls at the Kiryat Ata intersection and Ikea and the Big and today for any nonsense you have to travel 5 kilometers outside of Haifa to the distant bay malls.
It buried the lower city instead of bringing the malls to it. The goal of the shakedown was clear from Metro and highways (route 22) would bring the Haifaites to their malls at the expense of the lower city.
Instead of the Navrazel or Mihora railway, it is better to cancel the Shemona and Bat Galim stations, to make a tunnel from the heart of the bay to the Carmel beach. Those who want to get to the city will take a bus. This will shorten the trip to Tel Aviv from Kiryat, instead of the rail, a road can be built to bypass the traffic jams, or alternatively, the entire coastal area can be opened to residents.
Return the abandoned cinemas in Hadar to activity!!! And preferably one hour before!!
There is nothing to compare the old times to today, so everything was exclusive
And today is not comparable
The momentum must be continued without interruption, including urban renewal (demolition of old buildings that have no historical value and tend to fall down).
Construction of fancy modern buildings and a well-kept and beautiful green environment!
As a woman who earns a living from the construction industry, I absolutely support you. At the same time, we must not forget and neglect the places of recreation and spirit, because without these there is no point in life.
A magnificent institution like the "Hasandak" inn, which I wrote about in my response (the previous one to your comment), it was forbidden to allow it to be closed and additions like the one above, a theater on stage 3 and many more that were closed as a result of indifference and failed treatment.
All this and more and one painful eulogy for the "Godfather"!
To the sounds of night trains passing by in a storm
sitting with friends and gossiping about the world,
There I drank my first glass of rum
There I sank my teeth into a juicy corned beef sandwich
or veal tail stew
or a plate of shrimp in butter
There I also met the sailor, my angel……
No more !
Everything gassed and disappeared and only the memory and a dark hut remained
To the designer!
Apart from noise and explosions from the vehicles of Haifa Arabs there is nothing there
All this and more and one painful eulogy for the "Godfather"!
An excellent and wonderful article, my friend Michal Grover, from my friend Nega Karmi's website. Shabbat Shalom.
Rafi Raful Hasson, you are a chatbot of the Haifa News Corporation. Are you a real character? unbelievable.
Hadar, next in line?
Michali wonderful article
for the pipes above. Those who have been following the underground city for the past 20 years, a boom is definitely felt. Many new restaurants, pubs, the port street is much busier than before. And there is definitely a change for the better. Of course, the followers of Klish will look for any way to slander her predecessor in the position - Yona Yahav - who certainly deserves his dream, and the article is certainly correct.
Nice, you wrote 100% accurate and correct
List of anchors of commercial life who left the lower city in the last 30 years:
- Israel Police Beach Headquarters
- Zim company headquarters
- Headquarters of the Electric Company
- Closure of 4 flagship branches of banks
- Bank Leumi's management headquarters
- Headquarters and headquarters of Bezeq company
– 4 large night clubs
- IBM Haifa
The flourishing of the downtown is a fiction... lots of closed shops and shops left as bastas.
There is one part of the shopping center where there is night life with restaurants and bars near Paris Square, it's nice.
There are a few more restaurants on Hanamal Street - it's nice.
But there are still many empty buildings, both around the port and around Jaffa Street.
There are many office floors that are sparsely occupied or completely empty.
Young people didn't move there, even students don't see this environment as a good place to live and today they are looking for something quiet
The main problem of the street and of the downtown in general is that it is a street of vehicles and not a street of people.
Where there are no vehicles and the streets are closed like in the old commercial center, there is nightlife and fun to walk during the day.
Along the busy traffic on Independence Road they left very narrow sidewalks, right next to very busy traffic. That's why the businesses there are suffering.
If it were possible to close Ha-Aztmaut Street to vehicles completely like Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and leave only light rail - it would really flourish.
The matron is a bad invention, which cuts off Hatzamtu street with fences along its entire length. The bus traffic endangers the pedestrians in the very narrow stations, and also in the stations themselves. There have been dozens of fatal accidents. The matron's solution on Independence Road is a failure, and destroyed the street. The street that is almost completely closed to vehicles, the port street, is thriving. And the Independence Street with traffic jams and noise continues to fade and at night it is not pleasant to walk along it at all. That's why the businesses there are closing at a dizzying pace.
Near Beit Dagon there are no sidewalks for pedestrians at all, even though it is adjacent to the Central Railway. The central train was "buried" in a dusty parking lot, instead of a beautiful urban square in front of the station. A miss like all the misses of Haifa. In general, it can be said that the buildings along Independence Road continue to suffer from the noise and the lack of demand to live and work on the street. The rent there is cheap, compared to inner streets.
The Government Kiryat that went there "by decision of the previous mayor" (not true, it was during Mitzna, when the government decided to establish a Government Kiryat) left the Tower of the Prophets and accelerated Hadar's decline. It can be said that this was one of the worst decisions in the history of Haifa, which led to the abandonment of Hadar by government offices.
The lower city unlike Sharon in Tel Aviv or Jaffa Street and the entrance to Jerusalem suffers from the neglect of government budgets for the revitalization of city centers. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem they succeeded in closing off areas for vehicles, lowering huge parking lots and roads underground. Haifa has been neglected in terms of public investment. It is even worse, that now the electrification of the train will be done in front of Hamal Street with huge fences and a network of posts and radiation, something that will further damage the restoration of the Hamal Street area and no one is compensating here to stop the failure.
The problem of the problems in the lower city, the separation of the port from the city by the railway! A disaster was forced upon us by the British. Only the diversion of the railway along the coast will save Haifa and not only the lower city
Well written, we will add more problems:
What to do, the majority of Haifa's population lives in Carmel and above and they still haven't thought of a proper urban connection (a subway connecting the Beit Biram-Moriya-Shed Hanasi axis with the other axes would justify its existence)
And in general the municipalities of Haifa for generations have been busy cutting off night life and community life from the population centers and not providing for a comfortable group in the evening
Most of the flourishing businesses there are owned by cousins and the Arab population Friday and Saturday accordingly. Once upon a time, in the 90's there were quite a few clubs in the downtown area, all of them closed
Haifa's problem is and will always remain a ghost town!
This is the Arab population that brought collaborators to all of Haifa, bombed all the informers from the territories and immigrated them to Haifa. Just like the migrant workers from Sudan in the south of Tel Aviv, so they did to Haifa with collaborators from the territories. From Hadar to the lower city they make messes, murders and drug sales. The clan wars and shouts for business sponsorships. We let the owners of the place close and fold the businesses and move to Ramat Yishai and Afula Elit.
Haifa is a port city. And all over the world, a port city bustles with day and night life! But Haifa is a city of workers and all the garbage comes to Haifa from Bezan and the chemicals that kill people with cancer. Until the clans of the participants and the ego wars of the sector! Make Haifa a ghost town. And as in everything in which the sector enters or steps!
Not grass size only blood drugs murder and crime.