Tsujido (Former Steel Works) about 60 years ago and today

History of Tsujido (Former Steel Works)

A section touching the north exit of Tsujido Station was for a long time the site of a factory that made steel. Just north of the tracks of the Tokaido Line there is a rectangle where long, narrow buildings line up facing the same way, and in every era the aerial photographs first draw the eye there. The factory left at the beginning of the 2000s, and a large commercial facility, a hospital and apartment buildings moved into the same rectangle. If you move through the eras, outside the section fields are replaced by housing, while inside it the factory roofs remain to the very end, and after that only the contents are replaced all at once. The outside and the inside change at different times.

A factory placed north of the tracks

In the 1961-69 photograph, the Tokaido Line crosses the lower part of the frame straight from east to west, and on its north side many factory buildings stand in long rows running north-south. White and gray roofs alternate like stripes, and each building is as long as dozens of the surrounding houses. On the left of the site, facing the tracks, there is one more building with a large, flat white roof. To the right of the factory there is a corner where small, long, narrow buildings of the same shape are lined up in many parallel rows. If you move your eye north, fields with lots of uneven sizes spread over everything, and at a height one third from the top of the frame a band of dark woods extends a long way east-west. In the middle above that band, whitish ground without trees shows through. South of the tracks, rows of houses with many garden trees mix with fields, and the roads are narrow and winding. In this era, outside the factory rectangle there are still more fields than anything else.

While the fields turn into housing

The most striking change in 1974-78 is above the band of woods in the north. Several long, narrow, winding surfaces of turf line up, and a golf course inside the woods has appeared. The factory rectangle has not changed in its outline or in the rows of its roofs from the previous era, but around it mid-rise apartment buildings like rows of flat boxes increase, standing facing the same way to the upper left and upper right of the factory. The corner to the right of the factory where small buildings were lined up has also been replaced by rows of large buildings. The fields in the north have been cut away by house roofs, and lots that look like fields remain only around the middle of the left side. The lower part of the frame was taken on a different day and appears reddish brown, and between the rows of houses south of the tracks, brown lots that seem to be fields or vacant land are scattered here and there.

The 1979-83 frame comes together as a calm brown overall. On the left side of the factory several large buildings with white roofs gather, and the mass of buildings along the tracks grows thicker to the east and west. In the middle on the right, a white square roof shines on its own. The turf surfaces of the golf course keep the same shape as in the previous era.

In the 1987-90 photograph, a wide road crosses the frame east-west along the foot of the band of woods. The factory roofs take on a rusty brown, yet the rows of long north-south buildings keep the same shape as in 1961-69. The surrounding housing is packed even more densely, and both south and north of the tracks the lots of fields can hardly be read anymore. Only the factory rectangle, in its old form, remains.

The town that moved into the former site

According to the records of the City of Fujisawa, Kanto Special Steel Works, which owned the factory, set out in 1999 a policy for using 4.7 hectares of surplus land, and in November 2002 it announced a complete withdrawal. In November 2003 it finished moving businesses such as rolls to the Kansai region, and in May 2004 it stopped production. In the same month of May 2004, about 30 hectares around the station were designated a national Urgent Urban Renewal Area. The city's policy regards the emergence of more than 20 hectares of land at the north exit of the station as a major question both for a hub of town planning and for industry. In July 2005 the nickname of the new town was decided as Shonan C-X, and on March 17, 2006, the Tsujido Kandai 1-chome District Land Readjustment Project, with the Urban Renaissance Agency (UR) as the implementing body, was approved. The groundbreaking ceremony was held on July 29, 2006.

The project reached beyond the former factory site to the station and the roads. In March 2001, before the announcement of the withdrawal, the 4.7 hectares of surplus land had been acquired by the Urban Development Corporation (later the Urban Renaissance Agency). In November 2005 the City of Fujisawa, the City of Chigasaki and JR East concluded a basic agreement on the improvement project for Tsujido Station, and in June 2006 street projects such as the Tsujido Station North Exit Odori Line were approved. The city's policy reconsidered the position of the original Kandai Park, placed a neighborhood park of about 1 hectare inside the development area, and assumed a residential population of about 2,300 and a working population of about 10,000 for the district at the north exit of the station. It is a design that draws both people who live and people who work onto land that one factory had occupied.

Once the lots were in order, companies moved one after another into the blocks of the former site. According to materials of the City of Fujisawa, Sumitomo Corporation's apartment buildings began taking in residents in March 2011, and the commercial facility Terrace Mall Shonan, also of Sumitomo Corporation, opened in November 2011 on about 5.91 hectares. In October 2012 Shonan Fujisawa Tokushukai Hospital began operating, and research and development bases and apartment buildings also moved into other blocks. The city regards this urban renewal project as completed in fiscal 2012.

In today's photograph, the striped roofs just north of the tracks are gone, and a mass of flat, large buildings fills the same rectangle. To its right tall apartment buildings stand, and toward the north a wide paved surface opens. The four sides of the section almost overlap the outer edge of the factory in 1961-69, and the outline of the steel factory has been carried on as the shape of the block. The band of woods and the golf course in the north, and the wide road at their foot, are in the same positions as in 1987-90, and in the upper left of the frame a few lots of rice paddies remain. The rows of houses south of the tracks have hardly changed the shape of their narrow, winding roads since 1961-69. On the left side along the tracks, around where the large white roof was, buildings with flat roofs also line up in today's photograph. Only the inside of the factory rectangle was repainted all at once, while outside it the replacement of fields by housing advanced little by little over several decades. The difference between the two speeds remains side by side in the same frame.