‘Enoshima’ gets a Toyoko Inn

Another new building is to be added to ‘Enoshima’, using the new Greenmax city building kit …

A whole block has been demolished in preparation for the erection of a new Toyoko Inn. For those who have not been to Japan, ‘Toyoko Inn’ is a chain of ‘business hotel’, that are usually close to a station (sometimes there are several in the same suburb), and are quite cheap – although the rooms are small – but unless you get lucky who spends any time in their room except to sleep !!!

Except for existing buildings that the company has taken over, the new ones all look the same (even the multi-floor colour scheme) and will be very easy to replicate using the new square-windowed Greenmax city building kit.

The branch opposite Shinagawa station is highly recommended, and offers one of the best railfan views you can get in Tokyo. Another unique feature of this chain is that 99% of the hotel’s managers are female. Other than Japan, they have several in Korea, and one is being planned for the USA. Here is their English web page (they also claim that every branch has at least one English speaking staff member).

http://www.toyoko-inn.com/eng/

Here are two views of the area before the bulldozers moved in …

Waiting for construction to start …

The end result will probably look like this one …

At the moment, as well as doing the buildings, I am also trying to work out the best way to fill the area again. Magically, you may find that some of the buildings return to the block after the hotel is finished, but I cannot guarantee they will be in the same place

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22/06/09

The ground floor has been constructed, and as you can see, I made the footprint 10×3. I needed the sides to be an odd number of panels, because of the centralized balcony, but 5 was too wide to fit in the space available.

– front

– back

Here are all the upper floor windows, waiting to be assembled. This time I am making the wall panels first, so they can be pushed flat and hopefully look better than the last one it did, and THEN assembling the 4 walls of each floor pair.

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27/06/09

Here is the progress so far – you can see the different coloured floors, as per the ‘prototype’. There is 2 more sets of the middle beige coloured floors to be added. The blank section on the back wall is where the stair/lift well and utility rooms are.

Because the width has been narrowed, so has the utility structure on the roof. There will also be a nearly full length sign on the roof as well.

front          |        back

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02/07/09

Now the full size buildings has been completed. Tasks now are to add more details and weathering, finish the roof stuff off, and add the huge billboard on the roof & the tall vertical sign at the front entrance.

front      |     back

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21/07/09

The building’s placement has been decided, and here is a preview (the sign still need to be added to the roof) …

You can see some of the other buildings have changed position, and even height, and an older Vollmer building has made a comback

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24/08/09

Here is the finished building …

front    |   back

roof details

front entrance

And here are some photos from the latest exhibition at Newcastle, with the building on the layout.