Lotte Shopping Applies for Extension of Temporary Use Approval Period for Busan Lotte Tower Department Store and Others

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] Lotte Shopping has requested Busan City to extend the temporary use approval period for the Busan Lotte Tower department store, Aqua Mall, and Entertainment Building, which ends on the 31st.

Lotte Shopping announced on the 14th that it applied for an extension of the temporary use approval period for the Lotte Tower department store building on the 12th.

The department store building, located on the former Busan City Hall site in Jung-gu, Busan, was granted a building permit along with Lotte Tower in 2000, and was constructed sequentially from 2009. Since then, it has been operating continuously under temporary use approval.

However, the originally approved Lotte Tower, planned to be 107 floors (428m) tall, was delayed for a long time and eventually downsized to 56 floors (300m) with an aerial botanical garden in 2019. In September 2020, the Busan City Landscape Review Committee decided to reconsider the plan, and Lotte recently maintained the plan to reduce the building height to 300m while completely changing the design.

Lotte reapplied for the landscape review with a design inspired by the bow wave (seonsupa, 船首波) formed at the front of a ship when it sails, and the city’s Landscape Review Committee has postponed the review, requesting additional materials to verify safety and other factors.

The city has stated that if Lotte does not show strong commitment to constructing Lotte Tower, it will not consider extending the temporary use approval period for the department store building and others. Accordingly, Lotte is known to have submitted supplementary materials for the Lotte Tower landscape review along with the application for the extension of the temporary use approval period.

Earlier in March, Lotte resumed the foundation construction of Lotte Tower after three years. The city plans to carefully review Lotte’s materials and then consider resuming the Lotte Tower landscape review and whether to extend the temporary use approval period.

If the temporary use approval for the Lotte Tower department store building and others is not extended, about 800 stores located there will have to close, and approximately 2,800 employees working there will lose their jobs, which is expected to cause controversy.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.