Eunma Apartment, a representative old complex in Seoul's Gangnam area, will be transformed into a large-scale complex with 49 floors and 5,893 households. The Seoul city government set 2030 as the target for groundbreaking. Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, said, "It could become the complex that completes reconstruction in the shortest time in Seoul."
Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, visited Eunma Apartment in Daechi-dong, Gangnam District, on the morning of the 13th. At the site, Oh pledged thorough process management and administrative support to ensure the smooth progress of the redevelopment project.
Eunma Apartment, an aging 14-story complex with 4,424 households completed in 1979, has long been cited as needing redevelopment, but floor limits and issues such as the underground passage of the Great Train Express (GTX)-C delayed the project for more than a decade. In 2015, residents proposed a 50-story reconstruction, but it was scrapped due to a 35-story height cap at the time, and at the end of 2022 it passed a reconstruction review with a maximum of 35 stories.
The stalled project gained rapid momentum in 2023 with the lifting of height limits. It cleared the review of the Subcommittee on Delegated Authority for the Rapid Integrated Planning of the Urban Planning Committee in early last month, eight months after applying for advice under the rapid integrated planning, and is now set for full-fledged implementation. Eunma Apartment aims to break ground in 2030 and be completed in 2034.
The Seoul city government said Eunma Apartment is the first case applying "Rapid Integrated Planning Season 2," and said it will push the project forward as quickly as possible through a sweeping overhaul of permitting regulations.
The rapid integrated planning is a public support program introduced by the Seoul city government to speed up redevelopment and reconstruction projects.
In the meantime, the Seoul city government has laid the groundwork to shorten the redevelopment project period by 5.5 years through measures such as: ▲ abolishing the maintenance index system ▲ introducing rapid integrated planning (time to designate a maintenance zone from 5 to 2 years) ▲ applying profitability adjustment coefficients ▲ and promoting measures for accelerating maintenance projects.
With this Season 2 of the rapid integrated planning, the city emphasized that it can cut an additional year, reducing the average 18.5-year redevelopment timeline to as little as 12 years.
The Seoul city government focused on a residential environment that blends education, welfare, and safety. A public parking lot will be installed to ease chronic parking shortages in the Daechi-dong cram school district, and facilities such as an open public library, a national and public daycare center, a police substation, a park, and a detention basin will be created.
For the first time in a redevelopment project, "public sale housing" will also be introduced. It is the first case where public sales are combined with a privately led reconstruction. Through applying the special floor area ratio for station areas (300 to 331.9%), an additional 655 households will be supplied.
The special floor area ratio for station areas is a system that boosts project feasibility by easing the floor area ratio up to 1.2 times the legal cap in station areas with convenient public transportation and excellent infrastructure. Of the eased floor area ratio, 30 to 40% is supplied as private housing and 60 to 70% as public housing.
Of the 655 additional households supplied through the floor area ratio special measure, 195 will be provided as public sale housing for actual demand, such as middle-class families with multiple children, while the remaining 227 will be private sales and 233 will be public rentals.
Meanwhile, the Seoul city government is reviewing applying the special floor area ratio for station areas to five complexes in addition to Eunma Apartment. It plans to comprehensively consider each complex's location characteristics and surroundings, such as district area and roads, to review an appropriate range of floor area ratio relaxation at the stage of establishing the maintenance plan and decide through committee deliberation.
Starting with the reconstruction of Eunma Apartment, the Seoul city government plans to ramp up Rapid Integrated Planning Season 2 and speed up redevelopment in key areas including the Gangnam area, Yeouido, Mok-dong, and Seongsu. Through this, it plans to supply 25,000 homes in Gangnam District and 310,000 homes across Seoul by 2031.
After touring Eunma Apartment that day, Oh met with residents and said, "Fast supply is the royal road to stabilizing real estate prices," adding, "Because it helps stabilize real estate prices, we will give (Eunma Apartment) incentives to speed things up." He added, "It could become the complex that completes reconstruction in the shortest time in Seoul."