Tachikawa’s Next Decade: Tachihi, GREEN SPRINGS and a New Hotel Guide

One company owns a 25th of Tachikawa. Its next ten years, from a 2027 hotel and pro basketball to world ballet, set beside a city outrunning its forecast.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Roughly one twenty-fifth of the ground in the city of Tachikawa (立川) belongs to a single company.

That is what Tachihi Holdings (立飛ホールディングス) says in its guide to its developments. Its landholdings come to about 980,000 square metres. The company calls them “social capital assets”. In other words, it is saying its own land is property that does not belong to it alone.

Over the last ten-odd years, that company has repainted the scenery of Tachikawa’s north side. A shopping mall, an arena, a sandy beach, and GREEN SPRINGS next to Showa Kinen Park. And now announcements for the next ten years are coming one after another. A new hotel in Faret Tachikawa, a wedding venue near Tachihi Station, a new professional basketball league at the arena.

Meanwhile, open the city’s own documents and you notice something odd. In 2023 the city estimated that its population would peak at about 186,000 in 2028. Yet on 1 January 2026, Tachikawa’s population had already passed that number. The town is running ahead of the forecast.

One company’s next decade, and a town that has broken into a run. Where do the two overlap? I decided to turn over the company’s announcements and the city’s documents, one page at a time.

Tachihi and GREEN SPRINGS’ next decade: land equal to 1/25 of Tachikawa

Let me start briefly with back then. The Tachihi group’s predecessor was Tachikawa Aircraft, a company that built aeroplanes. After the war, much of the company’s land was used by the US military, and it was returned in 1976. From then on, for a long time, the company’s main business was leasing land. I told that history in detail in the Tachihi instalment of this series.

The turning point came in November 2012. The reorganisation of the group’s businesses was completed, and it began to consider developing its property holdings as a whole. On 28 February 2014, the company adopted its “Basic Policy on Real Estate Development”. There are three principles. To be aware of the social responsibility arising from the history, location and size of the property it owns, and to seek harmony with the local community in redevelopment. To establish a business base that can contribute to the area sustainably. And for the group to drive the development itself.

The policy adds a sentence like this: because the site is vast and the constraints of the usage contracts complex, the development will necessarily take a long time. The company itself declared from the start that “this is going to be a long story”.

On Tachihi’s land today, in 2026, the first half of that long story is lined up. LaLaport Tachikawa Tachihi in December 2015; Arena Tachikawa Tachihi in October 2017. In February 2015 the company acquired about 38,878 square metres of state-owned land north of Tachikawa Station, away from its original holdings, and in April 2020 opened it as GREEN SPRINGS. The same year, SORANO HOTEL and TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, a hall of about 2,500 seats, opened. In 2023 came Auberge TOKITO, and in November 2024 MAO RINK TACHIKAWA TACHIHI, a skating rink supervised by the figure skater Mao Asada.

The buildings have won outside recognition too. According to the company’s history, GREEN SPRINGS received a Good Design Award in October 2021 and the 63rd BCS Award, an architecture prize, in August 2022. And in November 2024 the Tachihi group marked the 100th anniversary of its founding. A company born in 1924 to build aeroplanes has just entered its second century.

Count it all up and, in ten years, a whole town has been built. And much of it by one company. That is the first half. Where is the second ten years heading?

A wooden shopping complex, and a wedding venue by Tachihi Station

The building that announced the start of the second half was, surprisingly, made of wood.

In summer 2025, COMMONS TACHIKAWA TACHIHI opened on the west side of Tachihi Station. According to the company’s announcement, it is a commercial complex of two two-storey wooden buildings sharing a plaza and outdoor seating. The concept: “come on commons”. A plaza and planting were placed well back from the road in front, erasing the boundary between public and private, with the aim of making somewhere anyone would want to drop into on a whim.

The amount of wood is spelled out. For the columns, beams and exterior boarding, 383.50 cubic metres of Japanese timber were used, of which 142.73 cubic metres came from Tama, the forested western part of Tokyo. Growing forests, felling them, using them: the announcement explains it wanted to contribute to that cycle. Trees from the Tama mountains were carried onto the land of a company that used to build aeroplanes, and became shops. The announcement even takes the trouble to note that the blue of the logo is the colour of a robin’s egg, the robin being known as a bird that carries happiness.

Another building about to appear is a wedding venue. According to an announcement in September 2025, Tachihi Holdings is building a wedding venue, LUDENS GARDEN, in Takamatsucho, Tachikawa. The site is about 6,011 square metres, the building a single storey, at most 9.37 metres high. It has one chapel and three banquet halls, and is about 6 minutes’ walk from Tachihi Station. Completion is scheduled for 20 October 2026 and opening for around November 2026. The concept is “Fusion with Nature”: a hideaway mansion wrapped in nature and light.

On land where a company once built aeroplanes, from now on the words “I do” will ring out. Tachikawa has always been a place where things begin, but I never thought it would become a place where married lives begin.

So far, all this is around Tachihi Station. But the biggest building of the next ten years is going up a little away from the company’s original land, right in front of Tachikawa Station.

THE NEXTT HOTEL: opening in Faret Tachikawa on 1 March 2027

On 20 May 2026, Tachihi Hospitality Management, a Tachihi Holdings group company, announced that its new hotel, THE NEXTT HOTEL, would open on 1 March 2027. It is in Faret Tachikawa, at 2-40-15 Akebonocho, Tachikawa. It is connected to the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station by the elevated pedestrian deck, 5 minutes’ walk, and 3 minutes’ walk from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail.

The numbers in the announcement are big. Two floors below ground and twelve above, with a total floor area of about 25,800 square metres. 211 guest rooms, on floors 6 to 12. On the fourth floor, a grand banquet hall of about 1,050 square metres that can hold up to about 1,500 people. On the third floor, one medium banquet room and five small ones. The announcement claims it is one of the largest banquet facilities in the Tama area. Bookings for the banquet rooms were to open around summer 2026, and for rooms from autumn onwards.

Reading the list of room types, one line stopped me. Double, twin, suite, universal room, Japanese-style room. And “dog room”. Rooms where you can stay with your dog, in two sizes: 36 and 48 square metres. The day is coming when dogs will look down on the town from the windows of a twelve-storey hotel in front of Tachikawa Station. Inside there will also be an all-day dining restaurant, a bakery, a restaurant with private rooms, and a bar. It looks set to be a hotel where even people who are not staying can drop in for bread.

The origin of the name is in the announcement too: it carries the wish “to be the next place Tachikawa aspires to”. Why it is NEXTT rather than NEXT, with a doubled final T, the announcement does not say. The T of Tachihi and the T of Tachikawa, perhaps? That is purely my own fancy.

The concept is “CASUAL but SPECIAL”. The first report, in December 2025, said the hotel wanted to offer a special stay not only to people in the Tama area but to guests from Japan and abroad visiting Tachikawa for sport, events and sightseeing. Note the words “from Japan and abroad”. Tachikawa’s hotels have clearly started counting visitors from overseas.

At present, if you want to stay on the north side of Tachikawa Station, there is SORANO HOTEL in GREEN SPRINGS. According to the company’s guide, every room has a park view over Showa Kinen Park, and on the top floor there is an infinity pool using water from the hotel’s own hot spring well. From 2027, another place to stay will be added right in front of the station. Stay with a view of the park, or hold a banquet by the station and stay there. The choices for a night in Tachikawa go up to two.

More places to stay also means that Tachikawa, a town for day trips, becomes a town for overnight stays. So what will the guests see in the evening? One answer is at the arena.

The arena and pro basketball: “the last B3 champions” move to a new stage

Arena Tachikawa Tachihi is a multi-purpose event hall holding up to 3,000 people, which went into use in October 2017. It is the home ground of the professional basketball team Tachikawa Dice.

Tachikawa Dice had a slightly unusual birth. According to Tachihi Holdings’ announcement, it was founded in 2016 as a professional three-on-three team by a coalition of Tachikawa business organisations, including the Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the city’s federation of shotengai (local shopping-street associations), the Tachikawa Tourism Association and the Tachikawa Junior Chamber. A professional team made by the town’s chambers of commerce, in other words. In 2018 it won the three-on-three “3×3.EXE PREMIER”, in 2021 it formed a five-a-side team, and from the 2022–23 season it joined B3, the third division of the B.LEAGUE, Japan’s professional basketball league. The team’s stated ideals are to create a new form of sports management with low barriers to entry that lasts, and to root sport in Tachikawa as culture.

Then, on 19 May 2026, Tachikawa Dice won the B3 League’s 2025–26 season championship. They finished the regular season in sixth place, and the captain said nobody had expected them to win. In the club’s first-ever play-offs they fought their way through and beat the Kagawa Five Arrows in the final.

Here a slightly comic decoration is attached. From 2026 the B.LEAGUE reorganised its structure, and Tachikawa Dice moved to the new “B.LEAGUE ONE”. So Tachihi’s announcement calls Tachikawa Dice “the last champions of the B3 League”. The last champions. A title no one can ever take from them.

The 2026–27 season was announced to open on 26 September. The new head coach is Akira Rikukawa, who led Tokai University’s men’s basketball team from 2000 to 2024 and won the All Japan Intercollegiate Championship seven times. The season, he says, has 60 games. For the home opener on 3 October, a promotion was even prepared: if Tachikawa Dice won, the player of the match would receive “a year’s supply of Tachihi beer (365 bottles)”. One bottle a day for exactly a year. The arithmetic works; how it squares with an athlete’s conditioning, I couldn’t tell you.

The arena draws crowds for more than basketball. A summer tour of professional sumo, the “Reiwa 8 Summer Tour, Grand Sumo Tachikawa Tachihi Basho”, was announced for the arena on 30 August 2026. (Reiwa 8 is 2026 in the Japanese era calendar.) On Tachihi’s land: figure skating on ice, beach volleyball on sand, basketball on a wooden floor, sumo on a clay ring. A different sport for every surface.

As far as I could tell from the company’s announcements, there is no plan for a new arena. What is changing is less the buildings than what goes on inside them. A team made by the town’s chambers of commerce plays 60 games in a new league. If there are more hotels to stay in, the day may come when supporters of a team from far away spend a night in Tachikawa. That is my own reading.