The Third Ear, a long-running Tel Aviv cultural institution combining a record and CD store with a live music club, has signed a 10-year lease in the Street Center complex on Ben Zion Boulevard. The move will take the business away from its King George Street home after 21 years, where it had occupied space once used by the legendary Maksim Cinema.
The new location, near Dizengoff Center and close to its current site, will give the chain about 300 square meters gross, including a roughly 20-meter commercial frontage facing Ben Zion Boulevard and Michaelis Square. The deal is estimated at tens of millions of shekels. Street Center is owned by developer Tzvika Bronfman, through R.BRONFMAN GROUP.
The Third Ear has been managed by Uzi Ozer and has operated for 37 years, becoming one of Israel's best-known music and culture brands. Its first branch opened in Haifa, where a location still operates at the Haifa Cinematheque. The Tel Aviv branch began in 1987 on Shenkin Street as an alternative record shop, added a video library in 1989, moved to King George in 2005, and opened the upstairs performance club, The Third Ear, in 2008.
Street Center was built on the site of an open public parking lot, most of which was bought in 2010 by Bronfman's group. The commercial center, which has been operating for about eight years around Michaelis Square, already includes a branch of the city supermarket chain Sofrioda and a Max Stock store. The new branch is scheduled to open during Hanukkah, toward the end of the calendar year. Both sides said the deal was completed quickly and amicably, calling it good for the store, the complex, and visitors.
