Compass Offices Expands in Japan, Announces New Location at WTC annex, Tokyo

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 14, 2024--

Compass Offices announces the pre-launch of the prestigious “ Compass Office WTC annex ” business centre. A remarkable addition to their portfolio of flexible office spaces in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Scheduled to open its doors in March 2025, this exquisite centre now invites prospective clients book guided tours.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241113899853/en/

“This project has been established as a joint project with the World Trade Center Building Center Co., Ltd., which is promoting the redevelopment of the Hamamatsucho area. Not only as an independent, flexible office space, but also as a part of the ecosystem of the redevelopment of the area around Hamamatsucho Station, including the main building of the World Trade Center, which is scheduled to open in 2027, we aim to propose a new way of working to improve the value of the area and create a bustling atmosphere,” says Kazuya Morikawa, Country Manager of Compass Offices Japan.

Compass Offices will occupy the entire 11 th and 12 th Floors of WTC annex spanning 560 Tsubo / 1880 sqm. The business centre comprises club lounge spaces with views of Tokyo Tower, meeting rooms with 86” touchscreen video monitors and a variety of workspace options. This new flagship workspace features private offices designed to accommodate teams of between 1 to 50 people.

Nestled in the vibrant Minato-ku district, the WTC annex is a modern extension to the World Trade Center site in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo. The building features state-of-the-art office spaces, luxury residences, and event facilities, making it a prime destination for business and personal needs in Tokyo's commercial hub.
WTC annex also features a thorough complement of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) technologies including HiDAX-e seismic dampers, solar panels and backup generators which can allow the building to function without power and water for up to 72 hours in the event of an emergency.

Additionally, Compass Offices will offer their tailored Enterprise Solution at WTC annex. Compass Enterprise Solution is designed for larger organisations, allowing clients to customise their office space within the Business Centre to meet specific needs. This flexible offering enables build-to-order options such as executive suites, team offices, meeting rooms, video conferencing facilities, and break-out areas, all crafted to align with the client’s unique operational requirements and employee preferences.

Key Features of Compass Offices at WTC annex:

Prime Location: Situated in Minato-ku, the WTC annex is located in a central business district with easy access to public transport, restaurants, and amenities. Hamamatsucho, is directly connected to Haneda International Airport by monorail, ideal for business travellers.

Transport Links: The WTC annex connects directly to Hamamatsucho Station and Daimon Station, offering access to buses, taxis, and secure parking. It links JR Hamamatsucho, Tokyo Monorail, and Daimon Subway, serving six routes. A revitalised plaza offers easy access to Haneda Airport make it a key gateway to Tokyo.

Flexible Solutions: A variety of workspace options are available, allowing businesses to scale their operations as needed. The space has 24/7 secure access allowing clients to conduct business with ease and at their convenience.

Modern Amenities: High-speed internet, Technologically enabled meeting rooms, and on-site reception support ensure that clients can focus on their core activities without distraction.

Community Engagement: Compass Offices fosters a collaborative atmosphere, encouraging networking and partnership opportunities among tenants.

About Compass Offices
Compass Offices is one of Asia Pacific’s leading providers of flexible workspaces for corporate and business professionals, growing startups, enterprise teams and international conglomerates. Since 2009, our teams have provided our clients with innovative bespoke business ready workplaces and professional services that facilitate growth in today’s dynamic business environment. Compass Offices offers a growing portfolio of locations across 9 cities in the Asia Pacific, serving a network of over 20,000 clients.

Compass Offices in Japan
Compass Offices commenced operations in the Japan market 13 years ago, opening our first location in Minato-ku, Tokyo in 2011. Compass Offices WTC Annex will bring the number of locations in Japan to 4 with more sites expected to open later in 2025. In August this year, Compass Offices opened a flagship Business Centre at Inogate Osaka which has attracted strong demand. This latest expansion demonstrates Compass Offices’ continued commitment to the Japan Market and optimism for the future.
For further information, please visit www.compassoffices.com

A variety of workspace options are available, allowing businesses to scale their operations as needed. The space has 24/7 secure access allowing clients to conduct business with ease and at their convenience. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Compass Offices fosters a collaborative atmosphere, encouraging networking and partnership opportunities among tenants. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Compass Offices announces the pre-launch of the prestigious “Compass Office WTC annex” business centre. A remarkable addition to their portfolio of flexible office spaces in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Scheduled to open its doors in March 2025, this exquisite centre now invites prospective clients book guided tours. (Graphic: Business Wire)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The bloodiest crackdown on dissent since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution is slowly coming into focus, despite authorities cutting off the Islamic Republic from the internet and much of the wider world.

Cities and towns smell of smoke as fire-damaged mosques and government offices line streets. Banks have been torched, their ATMs smashed. Officials estimate the damage to be at least $125 million, according to an Associated Press tally of reports by the state-run IRNA news agency from over 20 cities.

The number of dead demonstrators reported by activists continues to swell. Activists warn it shows Iran engaging in the same tactics it has used for decades, but at an unprecedented scale — firing from rooftops on demonstrators, shooting birdshot into crowds and sending motorcycle-riding paramilitary Revolutionary Guard volunteers in to beat and detain those who can’t escape.

“The vast majority of protesters were peaceful. The video footage shows crowds of people — including children and families — chanting, dancing around bonfires, marching on their streets,” said Raha Bahreini, of Amnesty International. "The authorities have opened fire unlawfully.”

The killing of peaceful protesters — as well as the threat of mass executions — have been a red line for military action for U.S. President Donald Trump. An American aircraft carrier and warships are approaching the Mideast, possibly allowing Trump to launch another attack on Iran after bombing its nuclear enrichment sites last year. That risks igniting a new Mideast war.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to detailed questions from the AP regarding the suppression of the demonstrations.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 at Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, initially over the collapse of Iran's currency, the rial, then spread across the country.

Tensions exploded on Jan. 8, with demonstrations called for by Iran's exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi. Witnesses in Tehran told the AP before authorities cut internet and phone communication that they saw tens of thousands of demonstrators on the streets.

As communications failed, gunfire echoed through Tehran.

“Many witnesses said they had never seen such a large number of protesters on the streets,” said Bahar Saba of Human Rights Watch. “Iranian authorities have repeatedly shown they have no answers other than bullets and brutal repression to people taking to the streets.”

Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian, a deputy interior minister speaking on state TV Wednesday, acknowledged the violence began in earnest on Jan. 8.

“More than 400 cities were involved," he said.

By Jan. 9, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Hossein Yekta, previously identified as leading plainclothes units of the force, went on Iranian state TV and warned “mothers and fathers” to keep their children home.

“Tonight you all must be vigilant. Tonight is the night for keeping mosques, all bases everywhere filled with ‘Hezbollahi,’” Yekta said, using a word for “followers of God” that carries the connotation of fervent supporters of Iran's theocracy.

Already weakened by the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June, the authorities decided to fully employ violence to end the demonstrations, experts said.

“I think the regime viewed it as this was a moment of existential threat and that they could either allow it to play out and allow the protests to build and allow foreign powers to increase their rhetoric and increase their demands on Iran,” said Afshon Ostovar, an expert on the Revolutionary Guard and professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California.

"Or they could turn out the lights, kill as many people as necessary ... and hope they could get away with it. And I think that’s what they ultimately did.”

In Iran, one of the main ways its theocracy can squash demonstrations is through the Basij, the Guard's volunteer arm.

Mosques in Iran include facilities for the Basij. Guard Gen. Heydar Baba Ahmadi was quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency in 2024 as estimating “79% of Basij resistance bases are located in mosques and 5% in other holy places.”

Iranian state media repeatedly has aired images of mosques damaged in the protests without exploring their links to the Basij.

“Most neighborhood Basij bases are co-located with mosques and most neighborhood Basij leaders are associated with the mosque leadership," Ostovar said, adding that demonstrators “going after regime targets” associated with repression would have considered them “a legitimate part of it.”

Videos show Basij holding long guns, batons and pellet guns. Anti-riot police can be seen wearing helmets and body armor, carrying assault rifles and submachine guns.

The videos show police firing shotguns into crowds, something authorities deny despite corpses showing wounds consistent with metal birdshot. Scores have reportedly suffered blinding eye wounds from birdshot — something seen in the protests around the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.

Iran's semiofficial ILNA news agency reported that Tehran's Farabi Eye Hospital, the premiere clinic for eye injuries, called in “all current and retired doctors” to help those injured.

We “received accounts that the security forces were just firing relentlessly at protesters,” said Bahreini of Amnesty International.

"They’re not just targeting one or two people to create a climate of terror for people to disperse ... but just relentlessly firing at thousands of protesters and chasing after them, even as they were fleeing so that more people were just collapsing to the ground with severe gunshot wounds.”

For two weeks, Iran offered no overall casualty figures. Then on Wednesday, the government said 3,117 people were killed, including 2,427 civilians and security forces. That left another 690 dead that Pourjamshidian identified as “terrorists.”

That conflicts with figures from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which put the death toll on Saturday at 5,137, based on activists inside Iran verifying fatalities against public records and witness statements. It said 4,834 were demonstrators, 208 were government-affiliated personnel, 54 were children and 41 were civilians not participating in protests.

Death tolls in Iran have long been inflated or deflated for political reasons. But the fact that Iran's theocracy offered any death toll — and gave a number beyond any other political unrest to strike the country in the modern era — underlines the scale of what happened.

It also provides a justification for the ongoing mass arrest campaign and internet shutdown. State media report dozens to hundreds of people detained daily.

Pourjamshidian also gave an extensive list of vandalism from the protests and crackdown, including 750 banks, 414 government buildings, 600 ATMs and hundreds of vehicles that sustained damage.

Meanwhile, uncertainty looms for Iran's theocracy over what Trump may or may not do.

Traditionally, Iranians hold memorial services for their late loved ones 40 days after their deaths — meaning the country could see renewed demonstrations around Feb. 17. Online videos from Behesht-e Zahra, the massive cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran, show mourners chanting: “Death to Khamenei!”

Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show large numbers of cars daily at Behesht-e Zahra’s southern reaches, where those killed in the demonstrations are being buried.

Elaheh Mohammadi, a journalist at Tehran's pro-reform newspaper Ham Mihan, recently noted it had been shut by authorities. She said journalists were working on stories about Behesht-e Zahra they weren't able to publish.

“We send out a message to let people know we’re still alive,” Mohammadi wrote online. “The city smells of death.”

“Hard days have passed and everyone is stunned; a whole country is in mourning, a whole country is holding back tears, a whole country has a lump in its throat."

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)

FILE - In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, File)