Tel Aviv is offering its first-ever kiosk for rent, a hexagonal structure built in 1910 on Rothschild Boulevard that once sold gazoz, a popular flavored soda drink to the city’s earliest residents.
The city published a tender Monday to lease two historic kiosks at the corner of Rothschild and Herzl Street, including the original stand that marked the start of Tel Aviv’s café culture. A bidders’ conference was scheduled the same day, and offers will be accepted until Oct. 30.
The one-story kiosk covers only 10 square meters (about 108 square feet) and is made of block walls with a wooden and metal roof. It was built after Akiva Aryeh Weiss, an architect and one of Tel Aviv’s founders, sought permission in 1909 to set up a refreshment tent for construction workers building the city, then still called Ahuzat Bayit.
The first official license was granted to a man named Kisilev, who opened the kiosk at the southeastern corner of Rothschild and Herzl, near the home of Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. Other kiosks soon followed along the boulevard, turning it into a social hub.
The structure was demolished in 1989 and rebuilt in 2004 with funding from the Phoenix insurance company and the Tel Aviv Foundation. While gazoz is unlikely to return to the menu, the municipality said the new tenant will be required to sell a few items at regulated prices.
A second property included in the tender is across the street at 6a Herzl. Larger at 28 square meters (301 square feet), it has housed several businesses in recent years, including chef Omer Miller’s Soso & Sons hamburger chain, Kiosk&co by Jordana Shai and Oshri Masahid from the reality show The Winning Kitchen, and the Wah Wah falafel stand run by Efi Raz with chef Lior Hadas of Café Europa.
Rothschild Boulevard is considered Tel Aviv’s best-known and most important thoroughfare, combining cultural landmarks, historic buildings and high-rises with public gardens, playgrounds, bike lanes and small cafés.
Deputy Mayor Assaf Zamir said the tender reflects a broader shift in how residents use the city’s public spaces.
“These are small spaces, most of them without the ability to cook, but they represent something bigger — the return to the public sphere,” Zamir told the financial daily Mamon and its online outlet ynet. “In the 2000s the kiosks became a symbol of the city.”