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Downtown hotel in Jongno to be turned into youth housing units

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An image of the youth housing to be set up by remodeling Benikea Premier Hotel Dongdaemun. / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government
An image of the youth housing to be set up by remodeling Benikea Premier Hotel Dongdaemun. / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

By Lee Suh-yoon

An 18-floor hotel near Dongmyo Station on Seoul Metro lines 1 and 6 will be refurbished into housing units for young people, the city government said Wednesday.

Except for two units that will be reserved for newlywed couples, all 238 rooms of Benikea Premier Hotel Dongdaemun, a mid-tier tourist accommodation, will be refurbished into one-person apartments for citizens between the ages of 19 and 39. Fitness rooms, book cafes and other shared facilities will be set up in the basement and on the second floor.

The building is expected to start accepting tenants next January after interior renovations are undertaken later this year.

"The carpets will be taken out and small kitchen spaces will be added," Jung Chae-mun, a city official, told The Korea Times. "The owner decided to switch to a rent revenue model because hotel revenue is seasonal and unstable."

In return for providing proper business permits and part of the construction costs for the hotel to make this change, the city government gets a say over how the building management sets the rent. After the Korea Appraisal Board calculates a reasonable rent level for the rooms based on the surrounding property market, the city and the building owner will sign a contract to set the initial rent below 95 percent of the market price for four-fifths of the housing units, and below 85 percent for the other fifth.

Since real estate contracts are typically valid up to two years, the building owner can later raise the rent by 5 percent a year at their discretion.

Similar public-private housing projects are underway in Seoul near subway stations, where people crowd around for a better commute.

"By switching empty rooms in office buildings or hotels near subway stations to special housing units, we will provide young people with housing options near work and rejuvenate depressed urban areas," Ryu Hoon, head of the city government's housing construction department, said in a press statement.




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