Hotel Okura’s renewal construction plan
The main building of Hotel Okura in Tokyo is going to be closed at the end of thsi August and a reconstruction will take place which will have finished by the coming spring in 2019 in order to meet the timing of preparation for the Tokyo Olympic games in 2020. (http://www.hotelokura.co.jp/tokyo/en/)
The current main building of 11 floors with 408 guest rooms will be replaced by two new buildings of 41 floors and 16 floors with 510 guest rooms due to decrepitude. The current one was open n 1962, two years before the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 as its preparatory inflastructure and now the new ones will be created as a preparation for another Tokyo Olympics in 2020. However, a lot of people including foreign celebrities who have stayed at the hotel are reluctant to accept the reconstruction and against the plan of demolision because of their sweet memories with building of the beautiful conbinations of traditional Japanese artistic and western modernism. Famous writers, foreign monarchs, well-known business people and so forth enjoyed the lavish stays at the hotel in the past 50-year history and some of those influential foreign visitors even conduct protest sign-in campaigns against the demolision plan. The culturally important asset of the hotel building might be spared and might be preserved in some other way due to the passions of those who love those works and facilities.
At any rate, the hotel will remain open in business operation even during the reconstruction utilizing its annex building.