Ramat Gan’s Vertical City Is Two Towers, Not 470 Meters

Ramat Gan permitted a 72-floor rental tower and a 60-floor office for Vertical City on 11 September 2025. The 470-meter, 111-floor trio that architecture sites circulated on 6 January 2026 is still a district-planning object, not a building file.

Earthworks are already under way on the Diamond Exchange triangle, beside the Ayalon Highway. The shaft that would stand 226 meters above the Bursa’s old landmark remains a drawing, in a city that has announced Israel’s tallest more than once.

Two Towers With a Permit, One Still on Paper

Mayor Carmel Shama Hacohen signed a full building permit in September 2025 for Vertical City on the Stock Exchange Triangle. The live file is not three linked supertalls. It is two towers on a shared eight-floor podium, plus a public garage and a new square.

The residential shaft is 72 floors of long-term rental homes and student rooms, which the city said would be Israel’s tallest housing tower. Beside it sits a 60-floor office building. A third tower is being pushed through a district plan, and the architects have drawn that shaft at 111 floors.

WHAT THE SEPTEMBER 2025 PERMIT ALLOWS

• Housing shaft: A 72-floor tower of long-term rental apartments and student dorms.
• Office shaft: A 60-floor employment tower on the same podium.
• Podium and energy: An eight-floor mixed base plus two underground levels for an energy centre.
• Parking and park: A six-level public garage, about five dunams of public ground, a square facing Menachem Begin and the Ayalon, and a green promenade.

Excavation and shoring had already started when the mayor signed. First occupancy is aimed at 2030, which is the developer’s date, not a topping-out party. The 111-floor spike is not in that permit.

The Brochure Height Is 470 Meters

De La Fontaine Architecture published the scheme as three linked towers rising 470 meters across 111 floors, with MSP Landscape Architects and WSP Engineers on the team. A planted spine, called a “green waterfall,” runs from the ground up the facades. An observation deck sits at the top. The package went out through a reader-submission channel, which is why the renders travelled as if the skyline had already moved.

Those figures match the talk Raphael de la Fontaine gave in Milan on 26 June 2025. He described a 470-meter object over a rail station, on a plot that cannot spread sideways because the Ayalon hems it in. He also described a single architectural figure in which school, hotel, office, and housing are hard to tell apart from the street.

That is a design argument. It is not the municipal file. The city is building the rental tower and the office first. The planted cascade and the deck live in the published scheme for the full trio.

Ramat Gan Has Announced Israel’s Tallest Before

The Bursa has been selling height for a generation. Moshe Aviv Tower, still the district’s occupied marker, is 68 floors and 244 meters to its tip in Council on Vertical Urbanism figures, and it opened in 2001. A 470-meter shaft would stand 226 meters above that mark. Ramat Gan has drawn numbers in that range before, and several of those drawings never became a crane count.

The Elite Junction That Did Not Rise

On the old Elite chocolate site, a 65-floor, 265-meter housing tower was sold as Israel’s tallest. Unit buyers were later told the job was off because the permit dragged. The plot did get towers in the end, at more ordinary heights. The lesson sat next door to the triangle Vertical City now occupies: a record on a brochure is a weak claim until a district committee and a crane agree.

One Hundred Floors Approved and Unbuilt

South of the Bursa, Bein Arim Tower was cleared at 100 floors and 400 meters, a first for a district committee in Israel. It is still a plan. In April 2019 the Ramat Gan local commission approved a separate Diamond Exchange expansion with a 120-floor lead tower and companions of 88 and 77 floors. That local vote still needed Tel Aviv district consent. The pattern is the same instrument in a different year: announce the national record, then spend years in the layer of government that can actually let it rise.

THE BURSA HEIGHT FILE

Locals already talk about the Bursa as a stacked city that will take the metro title back from Tel Aviv. Vertical City is the branded version of that boast. The permit on the triangle is more modest than the boast, which is how this district has worked before.

Who Owns the Land Under the Render?

Israel Canada holds 55.9 percent, BSR 19.6 percent, and Clal Insurance 24.7 percent. In 2021 the Israel Canada and BSR partnership won a government rental-housing tender for the triangle, about 10 dunams north of the Diamond Exchange, and paid NIS 936 million. That bid sat 73 percent above the NIS 540 million floor. The companies then put the build, including construction, at about NIS 4 billion. Clal came in later as the third partner.

Approved rights on that tender were about 200,000 square meters in three 60-floor towers. The current presentation for the expanded plot, about 11 dunams once 1-3 HaTa’as Street is folded in, is 354,000 square meters including underground space. The two towers that already have a permit account for about 170,000 square meters of that. Israel Canada’s own project page sells the job as a Bursa District mixed-use complex with long-term rentals, student rooms, offices, shops, and public buildings.

THE PARTNERSHIP AND THE LAND

• The bid: NIS 936 million in 2021, 73 percent over the NIS 540 million minimum.
• The split: Israel Canada 55.9 percent, BSR 19.6 percent, Clal Insurance 24.7 percent.
• The extra lots: Combination deals on 1-3 HaTa’as Street, with a condition that the new urban plan is approved by December 2026.
• The lease pace: Israel Canada’s 2025 annual report put the marketing rate at 36 percent, with 8,700 square meters of offices signed in 2024 and 1,718 square meters in 2025, at an average NIS 25,000 a square meter.

Office demand has bunched into one of the permitted shafts. The second volume is waiting on a real anchor, which is a slower story than a 470-meter render. Barak Rosen, Israel Canada’s owner and chief executive, called the permit a chance to keep a continuous build going, and credited Raphael de la Fontaine’s plan plus green-building systems. The city’s interest is plainer: a flagship on the Bursa, more public ground, and a tax base that is not only diamond offices.

This is a strategic flagship project, which is expected to change the face of Ramat Gan and the entire Bursa area. The permit issued this week is a significant milestone in advancing the largest development move in Israel, which will position the city at the forefront of urban and business renewal in the entire country.

Carmel Shama Hacohen, Mayor of Ramat Gan, municipal statement, 11 September 2025

That is a mayor talking about the permit he signed, the 72-floor and 60-floor pair, not the unbuilt 111-floor spike.

A City Folded Onto the Ayalon

De la Fontaine is a Yale-trained specialist in tall buildings who worked at Kohn Pedersen Fox, Pelli Clarke Pelli, and Santiago Calatrava before opening his own office and joining D-BLK in Ramat Gan, the Israeli firm of record with Bareli, Levitsky, and Kasif. Architecture sites bill the job as DLF. Israeli filings bill it as D-BLK. The firm’s public list lists Vertical among current work next to Midtown Jerusalem and Sde Dov.

In Milan he asked how you actually build a vertical city, not a stack of floor plates. His team took a 400-by-400-meter slice of central Milan, mapped the mix of homes, offices, public rooms, and small leftover spaces, then tried to lay that fragment on the Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan plot. It would not fit. The move was to turn the plan on its side and compress it into a section. The published 470-meter object is that section drawn at full height.

He wanted one silhouette, not a collage in which the school, the hotel, and the offices each wear a different costume. Some people will read that silhouette as a Gulf import. He said the form comes from tying the uses together. He also warned that towers with no idea of the ground wound a city. On this site the ground is a highway edge and a station, which is why the first public pieces in the permit are a square, a promenade, and a garage, not a deck in the clouds.

Long-Term Rentals, Student Rooms, and Shenkar

The program that can actually be counted is not a luxury spike. The residential tower is planned for 400 long-term rental apartments and 350 student dorm rooms. About 85,000 square meters of the mix is offices. Shenkar College is slated to take four floors of a low building that also holds shops and offices and ties into the three lobbies, if the expanded plan holds. The college would leave its Anne Frank Street grounds, about 12 dunams, which the city wants for a school and kindergarten.

That is a rental-housing tender wearing a supertall coat. The 2021 sale was run as a government lease-housing deal, with a 20-year upkeep duty on the winners. The architecture press noticed the green waterfall. The land contract noticed 400 homes you cannot flip on day one, and 350 beds next to a design college. The city’s note on the third tower even asked for about 20 percent housing in that shaft, a mix the Bursa has not been known for.

Put those uses on top of a station and the Ayalon, and the “self-contained city” line is less a slogan than a traffic argument. People are supposed to arrive by train. The permit’s six-level public garage is for the ones who do not.

December 2026 Hangs Over the Extra Land

On 3 April 2026 the Tel Aviv District Committee still had the 111-floor tower, the 72-floor housing shaft, and the 60-floor office in front of it as a rights-expansion plan, with a session then about two weeks off. The extra land at 1-3 HaTa’as Street is locked to a hard date. Combination agreements with those rights holders require the new urban plan to be approved by December 2026. Parking land is leased from the city.

HOW THE TRIANGLE GREW

1. 2021: Israel Canada and BSR win the government tender for about 10 dunams at NIS 936 million, with rights then drawn as three 60-floor towers and about 200,000 square meters.
2. 11 September 2025: Ramat Gan issues a full permit for the 72-floor rental tower and the 60-floor office, and says it is advancing a district plan for a third tower.
3. 6 January 2026: The 470-meter, 111-floor linked scheme is published as an architecture submission, complete with the green waterfall and a deck.
4. 3 April 2026: A D-BLK presentation still shows 111, 72, and 60 floors and 354,000 square meters, while the district committee prepares to hear the rights expansion.
5. December 2026: Deadline on the HaTa’as combination deals; without an approved plan, the extra lots and the 111-floor shaft stay off the first-phase file.

If that plan slips, the 72-floor rental tower and the 60-floor office can still rise on the land already bought. The 111-floor object, the observation deck, and the full three-tower silhouette cannot. Ramat Gan has been here before with a taller drawing than a permit. This time the cranes are at least turning on two shafts, while the third waits on a date that is already on the calendar.