Right next to Sarona the Gindi TLV Fashion Mall has just opened its doors. Built on the ruins of the wholesale market, the center contains most fashion brands, including H&M, Zara, Fox, Castro, Factor 54, Forever21, as well as several international brands opening their first shop in Israel, such as COS, Dior Boutique, Zara Home, Rag & Bone, Juicy Couture, or Adidas Originals. Another chain to open up in the mall is Super-Pharm, which just closed its store at the corner of Carlebach and Hahashmonaim. Only a subset of the 180 plus stores scheduled to open in the mall will be open on day 1. On the launching night, the company promised that over 100 stores would be open. The main attractions, such as the COS and Zara Home branches, will not be open on the launching night however; their opening is slated for early April.
The mall was originally scheduled to open in April 2015, but that was postponed several times. According to Gindi TLV CEO Mordi Shabat, the delay was not due to difficulty in finding tenants for the stores. "The late opening of some of the stores resulted from demands by the chains' headquarters overseas, some of them merchants doing business in Israel for the first time, and some of which are undergoing a change in concept," he said, adding, "the engineering complexity of the project, which is part of a complex composed of public centers, not just a shopping center, involves a very difficult engineering challenge, and led to two postponements of the opening date."
