Yokohama, where I have lived for many years, is an international port city with a population of 3.77 million, which celebrated 165 years since the opening of the port last year (2024), and it is said that its citizens are enterprising and love new things.
The area around the terminal “Yokohama Station,” which is the gateway to the city, has been undergoing redevelopment in recent years, mainly at the west exit. The Minato Mirai 21 district, making it a symbolic area of Yokohama, is home to high-rise office building, shopping malls, hotels, arenas and more.
Meanwhile, if you take a walk around “Kannai Station,” where government offices such as prefectural offices, district courts, and financial institutions are still concentrated, as the center of Yokohama since the opening of the port, there are several Western-style historic buildings built before the war.
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The Red Brick Warehouse, where many tourists gather, the Yokohama Three Towers, which are still in active use as prefectural offices and customs offices, etc., and the Hotel New Grand where Commander MacArthur stayed when he was stationed after the war are famous, and old bank building, with its very impressive construction, remains, symbolizing the areas status as the trading center of Japan since before the war. What is unique is that these old bank buildings are now being used in a completely different genre from their previous uses as hubs for cultural and artistic activities.
In the Kannai area, after the bubble economy burst, vacancy rates for office buildings remained high in the 10% range for a period of time, and hollowing out was a concern. Even now, at the land price level. It seems cheaper than the Minato Mirai 21 district and the area around Yokohama Station, but in order to revitalize the Kannai area, which has led Yokohama active for a long time, efforts have been underway to regenerate historic buildings that have finished their traditional role as hubs for cultural and artistic activities since the early 2000s. For example, the building of the former Fuji Bank Yokohama Branch was used as a campus for the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School and has produced many talented people who are active in the film industry, and various art projects have been developed at the former Daiichi Bank, and it has played a role as a place for artists to gather and share their activities. Efforts to utilize the “creativity” of culture and art in community development are spreading all over the country.
In addition to historic buildings, dilapidated buildings built in the Showa 30s in the Kannai area, have been used as places of activity for ateliers, studios, etc. due to government support and renovation of idle buildings.
The area around the Kannai area, which is a business district, is also a city where people involved in various creative activities gather.
Old buildings are not necessarily easy to use due to steep stairs and narrow corridors, but they have a tasteful atmosphere not found in modern buildings, and it seems that the creativity and inspiration of the people involved in these activities is being unleashed.
There are difficult issues such as how to deal with the aging of the structure and equipment as the years go by, but I hope that by changing our way of thinking and making creative use of the stock left in the city, the individuality and appeal of the city will be improved, and community development so that the people living there can live with pride will progress further.
Reprinted from Real Estate Management Journal Co., Ltd. “Weekly Real Estate Management” (with permission)
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