A mega apartment complex with more than 2,000 households will be built in the semindustrial zone of Mullae-dong 1 to 4, Seoul. On the 27th, Samsung C&T and Daewoo E&C will be chosen as the builders, kicking off full-scale redevelopment. It is a transit-accessible area close to Mullae and Sindorim stations on the Seoul Subway, and it also has good access not only to Yeouido, the financial hub, but also to Mok-dong, Gangnam, and Gwanghwamun. The residential environment of this once-blighted area is expected to improve significantly. It is also an advantage that the area has not seen a newly built large complex for more than 20 years.
According to the maintenance industry on the 25th, on the 27th the Mullae-dong 4-ga Redevelopment Maintenance Project Association will hold a general meeting to select a builder and plans to choose a Samsung C&T–Daewoo E&C consortium as the builder. Competitive bidding failed twice—in Apr. and Jul.—in the second round of builder selection, resulting in no award, and at this general meeting, members will vote for or against selecting the Samsung C&T–Daewoo E&C consortium, the only construction firm to bid. An association official said, "Because this is a yes-or-no vote, Samsung C&T and Daewoo E&C are expected to be smoothly chosen as the builders."
The association and the builder consortium have presented the complex name "Mullae Naven" to members. The name embodies meanings such as navigate, adventure, and heaven.
This project will create multifamily housing (apartments), a Knowledge Industry Complex, a public office building, and ancillary welfare facilities on 94,087 square meters (gross floor area 360,576 square meters) around 23-6, Mullae-dong 4-ga, Yeongdeungpo District, the target site. Currently, most of the area consists of metal workshops and aging single-story dwellings, with semindustrial zones accounting for 92.5%, and it also includes general commercial zones (7.4%) and natural green zones (0.1%).
The association, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and Yeongdeungpo District are currently in talks to drastically revise the existing semindustrial area development plan. The original plan was to build 1,114 apartments and 1,041 units in a Knowledge Industry Complex, but they plan to raise the floor area ratio to increase apartments and reduce the share of the Knowledge Industry Complex. In Nov. last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced an improvement plan for the semindustrial area system, which includes raising floor area ratios, and the intent is to use this to revise the maintenance plan. At the time, the city also said the semindustrial area system improvement plan was a way to concretely realize the grand remodeling of the southwestern region, including this area.
Accordingly, late last month the association submitted to Yeongdeungpo District a revised maintenance plan to raise the apartment floor area ratio from the existing 300% to as high as 517%. The resulting number of households would be 2,358. Builders including Samsung C&T and Daewoo E&C are said to have included a smaller scale of about 2,200 households in their construction plan. The local government with permitting authority is expected to set the apartment scale within this range.
Mullae-dong has not had a large newly built apartment complex in the past 20 years. Representative complexes such as Mullae Xi (completed in 2001; 1,302 households) and Mullae Hillstate (completed in 2003; 776 households) were built in the early 2000s.
Park Hap-su, an adjunct professor at Konkuk University's Graduate School of Real Estate, said, "There has been no newly built complex for more than 20 years, and as a residential area backing Yeouido with good access to Gangnam, the location has advantages," adding, "It is currently a notably undervalued area, so the investment value from redevelopment is also quite good."
Ham Young-jin, head of Woori Bank's Real Estate Research Lab, said, "Due to the Seoul Metropolitan Government's policy of raising floor area ratios, the scale of multifamily housing will increase and the financial burden of association members' contributions will also decrease," adding, "Because it has good access not only to Yeouido but also to Gangnam and the Gwanghwamun area, and because a large newly built complex is being created for the first time in 20 years, market interest is expected to be high."