Mixed Use · Winner Izumi Garden
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MIXED USE · WINNER IZUMI GARDEN Tokyo, Japan Izumi Garden is located in the Roppongi neighborhood of Minato ward, one of the five wards compos- Development Team ing Tokyo’s downtown core. The neighborhood, known for its nightlife and expatriate community, is Owner/Developer characterized by a hilly topography. The 3.2-hectare (7.9 ac) site area above Roppongi i-chome (“i-chome” Sumitomo Realty and Development means first street) was owned by 60 proprietors and long-term leaseholders. These complications long Company, Ltd. prevented the site from being redeveloped for better land use. Tokyo, Japan The Sumitomo conglomerate’s founding family, however, still owned its feudal estate here: a man- www.sumitomo-rd.co.jp sion that has been preserved as Sen-oku Hakuko Kan, part of the Izumi Garden complex, as a museum Codeveloper for the esteemed Sumitomo Collection of ancient Chinese artifacts. The museum faces the perfectly pre- Mori Building Company, Ltd. served 3,950-square-meter (42,517 sf) garden after which the Izumi Garden complex is named. (Izumi Tokyo, Japan means “fountain,” as in a natural hillside spring, from which water flows continuously in the ancestral www.mori.co.jp garden.) From there, the site drops 20 meters (65.6 ft) to the Roppongi i-chome subway station. In the late 1980s, the planning for the new subway station on Roppongi i-chome prompted Sumi- Architect and tomo Realty and Development Company, Ltd., to lead the assemblage of the site and propose a large- Landscape Architect scale, mixed-use redevelopment within the guidelines of the recently approved District Renewal Program Nikken Sekkei (DRP) for this area of Roppongi. As majority owner, Sumitomo led a joint venture including Mori Build- Tokyo, Japan www.nikken.co.jp ing Company, Ltd. (which developed the nearby Ark Hills, Atago Green Hills, and Roppongi Hills); be- cause the project was being conducted under the auspices of the DRP, it bore the imprimatur of Tokyo’s city planning program. This made it easier to coordinate the interests of the 60-plus owners and public and private stakeholders and to streamline the permitting process. Izumi Garden was the first application of the DRP in Roppongi. Some of the benefits the program conveyed included a favorable floor/area ratio (FAR) allotment; an ability to negotiate with the transit company to coordinate the subway facility within the Izumi Garden project; and public subsidies for in- frastructure costs. An FAR of 1,000 percent was allowed for the two towers closest to Roppongi i-chome, compared with an average of 120 percent prior to redevelopment. In negotiations with the subway com- pany, Sumitomo was able to locate the new stop so that the concourse would open directly into the Izumi office tower. That seamlessness between building and subway station lobby enabled the building archi- tect to design a configuration that lets natural light reach the subway lobby, three levels below grade, and permits movement of large numbers of people in and out of the building. Finally, the Minato ward gov- ernment granted infrastructure subsidies that amounted to 6 percent of the total cost of development. At the center of Izumi Garden, a cascading series of plazas rises from Roppongi i-chome to the museum and garden along what Sumitomo calls an “urban corridor.” Terraced plazas, with shops tucked underneath WINNER · MIXED USE 43 Project Data Web Page www.sumitomo-rd.co.jp/izumi_garden Site Area 3.2 hectares (7.9 ac) 34 percent open space Facilities 208,002 square meters (2,238,915 sf) gross building area 83,300 square meters (896,633 sf) gross leasable office area 5,900 square meters (63,507 sf) retail area 261 residential units 189 hotel rooms 516 structured parking spaces 34 surface parking spaces Land Uses office, retail, residential, hotel, museum, open space, subway connection Start/Completion Dates at each level, feature broad steps on one side and escalators on the other. On the south side of the urban October 1988–July 2002 corridor is the 45-story Izumi Garden Office Tower, the tallest building in Roppongi at the time construc- Jury Statement tion was completed. On the corridor’s north side is the 32-story, 260-unit Izumi Garden Residential Tower. Over the years in a downtown Tokyo In one corner of the green-glazed office tower, a 16-meter by 16-meter (52.5 sq ft) flying atrium ver- district, a large number of individually tically connects 17 floors of offices to the subway lobby below ground. Two banks of glass-walled, high- owned parcels with uneven topogra- speed elevators are visible within their superstructures. The office floors start at the seventh level, at the phy had created an underused site. same level as the elevated expressway above Roppongi i-chome. Below the seventh-floor office lobby are The developer painstakingly assem- the retail and restaurant levels, closer to the sidewalk and to the terraced urban corridor. A stacked, voided bled the parcels and redeveloped them as a 3.2-hectare (7.9 ac), mixed-use core, another unusual feature, permits easy access to mechanical and electrical equipment and permits a project with a central spine of terraced staging area for renovation and repairs. plazas cascading down the hillside. The office tower was completed in July 2002 with undersubscribed lease commitments. In the fol- Izumi Garden comprises office and lowing year, vacancy in Tokyo’s five central wards increased, peaking at 6 to 8 percent. Sumitomo held residential towers, a hotel, a museum, out for its premium rents and tenants and was rewarded with an increase in demand in 2004. Izumi Gar- a retail complex, a new subway con- course, and a preserved ancient den is now fully leased. Moreover, its 189-room hotel reached an occupancy rate of 85 percent within its private garden. first six months of operations and has stabilized at that level. 44 MIXED USE · WINNER .