OSAKA - A 700-ROOM Tokyo luxury hotel tower due for demolition this year will first be used as an evacuation centre for people who fled areas near a stricken nuclear plant, a city official said on Friday.
The 40-storey tower of the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka will house people driven away from their homes near the coastal Fukushima atomic power station, 250km north-east of the megacity, by the radiation threat.
The Akasaka venue - designed by the late architect Kenzo Tange and once a favourite haunt of politicians and celebrities - will accommodate 1,600 people from early April until late June, the Tokyo metropolitan government said.
'The Tokyo government expects to announce as early as next week details such as how rooms will be allocated,' a Tokyo government official told AFP.
Other large venues in the capital have also opened their doors to evacuees from the north-east of Honshu island, where a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 wiped out entire towns and made hundreds of thousands homeless.
The Tokyo Budokan venue, the Ajinomoto Stadium and Japan's largest convention centre, the futuristic Tokyo Big Sight, have also been providing temporary shelter for a total of 573 evacuees as of Friday, the official said. -- AFP
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