CloudHQ Proposes Data Centre Rebuild of Tokyo Mall Despite Inzai Curbs
US data centre developer CloudHQ has proposed rebuilding the BigHop Garden Mall in Inzai, Greater Tokyo, around two data centres, testing local restrictions on such facilities near commuter rail stations. The plan, presented to the Inzai City Council on 29 September, would shrink the retail space to
Washington DC-based CloudHQ on 29 September presented its plan for BigHop Garden Mall Inzai, a 13-hectare (32-acre) retail complex beside Inzai-Makinohara Station on the Hokuso Line, to the Inzai City Council. Under the scheme, dubbed Project Asahi, the developer would shrink the mall to 13,345 square metres (143,644 square feet) of shops facing the station, add a public park and use income from the data centre element to pay for the retail rebuild.
Inzai city authorities are moving to bar new data centres around the city's three Hokuso Line stations, arguing that station areas should be kept for shops and services, according to a city briefing paper presented at the same council session. The city is making an exception for CloudHQ's proposed project near Inzai-Makinohara Station after the developer packaged the server facility with redevelopment of the retail centre, with CloudHQ presenting its plans directly to residents at briefings that run through 11 October.
CloudHQ is pitching the project as a rescue for a declining mall. Its presentation said meetings in 2025 with Japanese and foreign developers, trading houses, contractors, leasing companies and investment managers found no interest in investing in the property as a shopping centre. BigHop's sales have been flat, while large shopping centres in Kanto-region communities of under 150,000 people recorded 3.4 per cent sales growth in 2025, citing data from the Japan Council of Shopping Centers. Tenants face rising purchasing, labour and consumables costs, leaving little room for rent increases, according to the presentation.
The developer said the owner's income cannot absorb major equipment renewals expected over the next five years. BigHop opened in 2007 after being built by Takenaka Corporation, according to Kensetsu Tsushin Shimbun. A site plan in the presentation allocates 6,235 square metres to a community park and 8,450 square metres to future development excluding data centres, alongside office space. Of the remaining site, about half would go to data centres and related facilities and half held for future use, according to the Chiba Nippo newspaper, which identified the mall's operator as CloudHQ Japan and reported a target of completing the redevelopment by the mid-2030s.
The presentation does not disclose the planned data centres' power capacity or investment budget, nor when or on what terms CloudHQ took control of the mall. Inzai's council voted 19-0 in August 2025 for a resolution requiring that future data centres be built away from station areas, Nikkei reported. In a city consultation that opened in April 2025, 114 of the 126 data centre-related submissions, or 90.5 per cent, opposed the facilities near stations, according to the city's briefing paper.
CloudHQ told councillors it would develop community elements of the project ahead of the data centre component, and is considering offering classes and scholarships with local schools. Ten residents asked the Chiba District Court in March to revoke the building approval for a data centre planned near Chiba New Town Chuo Station by Inzai Five TMK, a vehicle backed by Mitsui & Co. The BigHop site already hosts server capacity: Stack Infrastructure developed a data centre on a former parking area at the southwest corner of the mall property as part of its two-building, 36MW Inzai campus.
Hyperscale facilities have drawn institutional buyers to Inzai. In 2025, Keppel DC REIT and its sponsor agreed to pay S$707 million ($551 million) for a newly opened Colt data centre in Inzai leased to Microsoft. Earlier this year, the Singapore-listed trust and Temasek-backed Keppel Ltd acquired a 90 per cent interest in two hyperscale data centres in Inzai from a joint venture of GIC and Equinix, in a deal valuing the properties and their operating company at JPY 190 billion ($1.2 billion). Founded in 2016, CloudHQ says it runs a global platform of more than 5GW of IT capacity; in Japan, it previously teamed up with ESR on a $2 billion, 130MW data centre campus in Osaka's Nanko Kita district.
