Hakata Riverain Mall and Hakata Station
Hakata Riverain Mall: Echoes of a Brand City That No Longer Exists
After Canal City Hakata,
I headed to Hakata Riverain Mall.
This commercial complex opened in 1999 as
“Super Brand City,”
and when I saw its brochure back then, I fell in love at first sight with its lavish, dazzling architecture. I was finally able to see it with my own eyes. Up above, it has an absurdly huge atrium, plus outdoor escalators so you can go straight into the atrium. For a building from 1999, it feels just a little too extravagant, doesn’t it? (lol) That’s third-sector development for you: a project jointly backed by local government and private companies.
By now, “a third-sector project, jointly developed and operated by local government and private firms, builds an overly luxurious facility, fails to attract as many visitors as hoped, and goes bankrupt” is practically a genre unto itself, and this place was no exception: the operating company went bankrupt in 2002. There was an Otsuka Kagu tenant here, and I kept thinking it reminded me of somewhere…
Tokyo Fashion Town in Ariake, Tokyo.
That one, too, put up a massive Kenzo Tange building. It was a Tokyo metropolitan third-sector project that opened in 1996, only to enter civil rehabilitation proceedings in 2005. But enough of that aside! The escalators I was so excited about only went partway up, and it seemed the atrium had been turned entirely into the Anpanman Museum, so I couldn’t get in. Such a shame…
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