六本木 - Roppongi Redux

The name Roppongi, like many areas of Tokyo, can refer to the subway station, locations that actually carry a Roppongi address or a wider area that may or may not have that address.

The name itself conjures up a variety of images including entertainment, foreigners, nightlife, luxury, and of course, trouble. Along with Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Ikebukero, Ueno and Asakusa, it has long been one of Tokyo’s “entertainment zones” of bars, restaurants, clubs and sketchier things.

A new reality is that the very centrally located Akasaka/Roppongi/Toranomon area is undergoing a long-term renaissance that will result in a conglomeration of multi-use complexes, high-end offices, luxury residential property and supporting retail and commercial services unlike any other part of the city and in great contrast to its primary rivals Marunouchi/Otemachi/Yurakucho and Nihonbashi/Kyobashi/Yaesu. 

 Game Changer - main tower of Roppongi Hills 

Office areas developed in Kamiyacho during the 1980s and early 1990s when rents were high and vacancies were low in Marunouchi and Nihonbashi. The 1986 completion of Ark Hills represented the first true multi-use complex (office, residential, hotel and retail within an integrated site) in Japan. Roppongi and much of Akasaka however, were years away from being broadly acceptable to blue chip firms as an office location.

The 2003 completion of Roppongi Hills was the real catalyst for Akasaka/Roppongi/ Toranomon as a highly competitive area The creation of over 1,900,000 sf (179,000 sm) of office space, a luxury hotel, 200 shops and 565 residential units among many other features in a “city-within-a-city” concept stunned the market and has deeply influenced developments ever since.

Mori Building and other major developers including Sumitomo, Mitsui, Mori Trust and Kowa have continued to build multi-use type assets leading towards a coalescence of these properties throughout the area. An emphasis on this type of large-scale integrated property development will continue well into the 2020s.

Convergence - blue shading for base buildings, yellow for key existing multi-use projects and orange representing major future large-scale developments

As part of these projects, roads are often improved, sidewalks widened and subway stations or exits newly added. Nearby landowners readily redevelop their sites to align with and leverage adjacencies to their larger neighbors.

Another result has been that in addition to the creation of new business and city hotels, a concentration of new, rebuilt or fully remodeled luxury hotels have arisen and are continually coming to market including Grand Hyatt (Roppongi Hills), Ritz Carlton (Tokyo Midtown), Andaz (Toranomon Hills), Okura (independent but rebuilding with an office tower and other features), ANA (Ark Hills) and The Langham (independent new construction, but strategically positioned between Izumi Garden and Tokyo Midtown). 

Oh Luxury - Grand Hyatt, Ritz Carlton, Andaz and a new Okura all in the hood

The recent completion of a sister complex to Izumi Garden (Roppongi Grand Tower) is already opening up another poorly utilized area. The future development of effectively a second Roppongi Hills near the existing site will take another large stride to further integrating the area as will the very large secondary buildings being developed around Toranomon Hills.

The over-arching design and development of Akasaka/Roppongi/Toranomon is in great contrast to Marunouchi/Otemachi/Hibiya and Nihonbashi/Kyobashi/Yaesu. Roppongi has a campus feel while the more traditional CBDs are more Manhattan-esque. For a variety of lifestyle related reasons, a significant number of office tenants, residential tenants and owners as well as other consumers are showing individual preferences for the campus style facilities. This has challenged developers in Marunouchi and Nihonbashi to add more of the city-within-a-city features that are shared between multiple large buildings.

Although some may lament the wider demise of the more mischievous side of Roppongi, those elements are unlikely to vanish entirely. The increase in office space and higher grade residential will raise the main street retail and restaurants to a more upscale position, but it will only push a certain amount of the bars, clubs, cheap eateries, strip joints and the like to back streets or higher floors of smaller buildings. More people living and working nearby certainly won’t sap demand. 

Photos: Header - Roppongi Crossing artwork, Roppongi Hills, Akasaka-Roppongi-Toranomon map, The Ritz Carlton at Tokyo Midtown

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