Manazuru Town × ENJOYWORKS — A Port Town of 6,000 Chooses Small Concession

Manazuru Town in Ashigarashimo District, Kanagawa Prefecture, is a port town of approximately 6,000 residents located about 90 minutes from Tokyo Station. Facing the Sagami Bay with scenic beauty, the town is also called the closest "depopulated area" to central Tokyo, with population decline and public facility maintenance as pressing challenges.

The approach this town chose for idle public property utilization is the small concession.

Why Small Concession

Conventional PPP/PFI schemes are designed for large-scale projects with budgets in the tens of billions of yen. Idle properties owned by a municipality of 6,000 — a two-story wooden building with 225 square meters of floor space — do not fit conventional frameworks.

Small concession is an approach where the municipality retains property ownership while granting operating rights to private operators for such small-scale idle public properties. In 2024, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism established a platform providing expert dispatch and project formation support.

The Manazuru case is the first where ENJOYWORKS was adopted as a partner expert under this platform.

Why ENJOYWORKS?

ENJOYWORKS is a community development company based in Kamakura, with a track record in idle property revitalization through its crowdfunding platform "Hello! RENOVATION." Manazuru chose this partner based on the need for a company with both "fundraising capability" and "citizen participation design skills."

Structure of the Comprehensive Partnership Agreement

On September 28, 2024, Manazuru Town and ENJOYWORKS signed a comprehensive partnership agreement. This agreement extends beyond a single facility, aiming to build systems where local residents themselves can become operators for the town's idle public properties overall.

Three Areas of ENJOYWORKS Expertise

1. Crowdfunding

"Hello! RENOVATION" is a crowdfunding platform specializing in property revitalization. Under municipal budget constraints, the mechanism for collecting small-scale citizen investments is a promising fundraising tool for facility utilization in small municipalities.

2. Property Revitalization Practice

With licensed architects, ENJOYWORKS has the practical capability to handle idle property revitalization — design, renovation, and operations — end to end. For cases like Manazuru's former Tsuchiya Residence, where the challenge is converting to new use while preserving historic building value, this expertise is indispensable.

3. Citizen Participation Design

ENJOYWORKS' greatest strength is its process design capability for developing facility utilization policies through citizen participation. Rather than experts presenting "answers," they design and facilitate workshops where residents consider "what they want" for themselves.

A Building Embodying Stone Industry History

The former Tsuchiya Residence is the historic home of the Tsuchiya family, who operated in Manazuru's stone industry. Manazuru has long been known as the production area for "Hon-Komatsu stone," with stone quarrying as the town's core industry. The residence is a historic building reflecting the prosperity of this stone industry, a two-story wooden structure of 225 square meters.

Role as Folklore Museum

It opened as a folklore museum in 1986, preserving and exhibiting materials related to Manazuru's history, culture, and livelihoods. However, progressive building deterioration and rising maintenance costs led to closure at the end of September 2024.

Utilization Challenges

Three structural challenges exist for utilizing the former Tsuchiya Residence:

Addressing deterioration: For an aging wooden structure, renovation costs and utilization balance must be carefully designed. Renovations preserving historic value tend to cost more than new construction.

Scale constraints: Revenue obtainable from a 225-square-meter facility is limited, making large-scale commercial use unrealistic. A small-scale yet sustainable business model design is required.

Alignment with community wishes: As a building with historic significance as the Tsuchiya family home, its utilization must align with residents' sentiments. Resistance to external capital unilaterally determining utilization policy is particularly strong in small communities.

A Tender That Doesn't End at Selection

The most distinctive feature of the Manazuru × ENJOYWORKS small concession versus conventional tenders is the adoption of an "operator development-oriented public tender" scheme. It doesn't end with selecting an operator — the system provides community-wide support even after selection.

Limitations of Conventional Public Tenders

When a standard tender is published for an idle facility in a town of 6,000, the risk is high for "zero applicants" or "only applicants with motivation but insufficient experience or funds." The scale is too small for major firms, and the know-how and funding barriers are too high for local individuals — this mismatch is the structural barrier preventing idle facility utilization in small municipalities.

Structure of Operator Development-Oriented Tender

The operator development-oriented tender is designed to resolve this mismatch:

1. Pre-tender learning process: Workshops and study sessions before the tender provide opportunities for prospective applicants to refine their business plans
2. Explicit ongoing support: Post-selection, ENJOYWORKS continues supporting operators as experts, accompanying them from business launch through stable operations
3. Community embedding: From the outset, the structure is designed for operators to run businesses within a network of residents, government, and experts — not in isolation

This system represents an approach of "growing operators together with the community" rather than "selecting finished operators" — an institutional design suited to the realities of a 6,000-person town.

Residents Design the Tender Requirements

The most innovative aspect of the former Tsuchiya Residence small concession is that tender requirements were not designed by administrators or consultants but by residents themselves through citizen-participatory workshops.

Workshop Structure

Manazuru Town held workshops themed "Connecting the Former Tsuchiya Residence to the Future," where residents contributed ideas for tender requirements. The result: 8 tender requirements crafted by residents' own hands.

Structural Significance of Citizen Participation

Three benefits arise from having residents participate in tender requirement design:

1. Ownership of the project

Toward operators selected under requirements they themselves designed, residents maintain not a "someone else's matter" stance but an "we chose this" sense of ownership. This structurally promotes post-launch community cooperation — patronage, word-of-mouth, volunteering.

2. Surfacing tacit knowledge

"Regional tacit knowledge" that administrators and consultants tend to miss — residents' feelings about the former Tsuchiya Residence, what they want and don't want for this place — becomes visible through workshops. This information refines tender requirements and consequently improves the fit between selected operators and the community.

3. Front-loading consensus building

Cases where resident opposition emerges after facility utilization policy has been decided are common. Involving residents from the tender requirement stage front-loads the consensus-building process, preventing the dissatisfaction of "it was decided without our knowledge."

Decision Criteria for Small Concession Adoption

The Manazuru case demonstrates that small concession can be viable even at the 6,000-population scale. However, clear conditions for viability exist.

Conditions Suitable for Adoption

1. An idle public property you want to utilize

Small concession is suited to municipalities with the specific challenge of "idle property utilization." A vague motivation of "wanting to do something new" is insufficient — a concrete challenge of "what to do with this facility" is the prerequisite.

2. The facility has a "story"

Buildings connected to regional history, like the former Tsuchiya Residence, hold value beyond mere idle property. This "story" serves as a differentiation factor for operators and as an object of attachment for residents.

3. Expert partnership is possible

Specialized knowledge is needed for small concession institutional design, business scheme construction, and citizen participation process design. Like Manazuru partnering with ENJOYWORKS, external expert collaboration is essential. MLIT's Small Concession Platform functions to support this expert matching.

Future Development

Manazuru's comprehensive partnership agreement covers not just the former Tsuchiya Residence but the town's idle public properties in general. If the former Tsuchiya Residence business model succeeds, horizontal expansion to other idle facilities becomes possible. This model of "expanding one facility's success to multiple facilities" shows a realistic path for idle property utilization in small municipalities.

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The Manazuru case is ongoing, and the outcome of the former Tsuchiya Residence operator tender and subsequent operations remains to be seen. However, the design philosophy of "residents designing tender requirements and nurturing operators while advancing public-private partnership" merits reference as a new model for idle facility utilization in small municipalities, regardless of the project's ultimate outcome.

What matters is not adopting the small concession "system." Residents themselves considering "who wants to use this place and how," selecting operators based on those answers, and nurturing them — the design of this process is the core of public-private partnership in small municipalities.

Complete Guide to Small Concession

System overview, implementation flow, and utilization cases comprehensively covered

Small Concession Case Collection

Structural analysis of nationwide small concession cases

References

What Is 'Small Concession' in a Town of 6,200? / Local Government Co-Creation CASE ⑪ Manazuru Town, Kanagawa (2024)

Adopted for MLIT 'Small Concession Formation Promotion Program' (2025)

Mayor Nobuyuki Kobayashi Interview — Great Co-Creation Starting from a Small Port Town (2024)

Toward Utilization of the Former Folklore Museum (Former Tsuchiya Residence) (Small Concession Project) (2025)