Developers say an enormous South Korean planned city slated for construction will become a new global hub for American multinationals that want a presence in Northeast Asia near China.
New Songdo City is a $20 billion project that will transform 1,400 square acres of reclaimed waterfront property – an area larger than downtown Boston – into a metropolis 50 miles from Seoul. It will be built over the next 10 years by the Gale Company, a developer based in Florham Park, N.J. and Posco Engineering and Construction, a Korean steel company.
They hope to lure American companies and foreign workers to the new waterfront city. “We re just embarking on our marketing program to multinational corporations, including 12 financial companies,” said John Hynes, president of New Songdo City Development. Hynes and Stanley C. Gale, Gale Company chairman and chief executive, discussed the project last month at a breakfast held at the Asia Society in Manhattan. Businesses are interested in locating in this still nonexistent city because of its location, adjacent to Incheon International Airport, as well as the city s proximity to China, Hynes said. When completed, New Songdo City will include over 40 million square feet of office space, 30 million square feet of residential space, 5 million square feet of hotel space and 10 million square feet of public space, including a 65-acre central park, according to the Gale Company s Web site. The first phase of the complex, a convention center, is being designed, and construction is slated to begin in the fall.
In its first five to seven years, its developers expect that 90 percent of the city s anticipated 500,000 residents and workers will be Korean, but they expect New Songdo City – whose name means Pine Island in Chinese -to become more multinational over time. Many companies are interested in maintaining a hub near China, while reaping the benefits of being based in Korea, which include fewer restrictions on foreign-owned real estate and businesses, Gale said.
As Korea develops economically and China moves closer to becoming a thriving free-market economy, “New Songdo City is a logical next step,” he said. The Gale Company is working with Morgan Stanley in the United States and ABN Amro in Europe to drum up foreign investment in the project. The architect is the New York firm Kohn Pederson Fox Associates.
In drawing up its master plan, the architects have looked to “global hub cities,” said James von Klemperer, its design principal. “We looked to other trade cities in the history of the world, which have managed to make places where everyone could bring their traditions of design and showcase them all,” von Klemperer said.