Not far from the central bus station in Jerusalem is a run down building that was once a well known powerhouse in the national economy. The current owners are demanding a lot of money for anyone to renovate it and then rent it. Equally significantly, the site owns about 20 parking places.

Let me clarify: Each space is worth about 700 nis a month, close to US$200. Jerusalem is a city that suffers from daily traffic jams. A light railway is being constructed right through several of the main congestion points. And several major public buildings are also going up, often in the same areas.

To add to the picture, the parking problem in the high-tech centres is a bad joke. You can now begin to appreciate that the aforementioned property is even more valuable than ever.

The issue was highlighted in a recent article. It is estimated that “highteckies” are highly mobile people – around 20% swop positions each year. One common reason is that side benefits, which include easy drives to work and parking facilities, are better elsewhere.

Jerusalem is no longer a city, where the key jobs are in the civil service or in tourism. The city today hosts 485 high-tech enterprises, including 300 start ups. Other stats: –

• 144 are in the sciences or biotech.
• 31 starts ups were added to the list since the beginning of 2018.
• There are 19 r&d centres
• The city hosts 22 venture capital groups.

The growth of Jerusalem’s economy has been amazing. And there is seemingly no end to the progress. For example, earlier this week Jerusalem launched an accelerator programme for ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) entrepreneurs looking to establish startup companies. Although comprising around 11% of the population, barely 1% of such people are engaged in the high-tech world.

At the same time, we saw New York Governor, Cuomo, touring high-tech successes in Israel’s capital city. Clearly the man and his team feel that this is something that his ‘small’ city can learn from.

Jerusalem’s high-tech sector needs to be serviced. (BTW, the new train service from Tel Aviv was launched recently, but with technical faults and delays galore). There is no doubt that much of the construction is much needed, but you cannot but feel that the central planners have got their coordination and timing wrong.