 Tokyu, the building's operator, designed the building as a "Fashion Community" containing small retail stores targeting the early-30s female consumer.Tokyu intended the store to compete with Seibu Department Stores, which was making inroads into the Shibuya area.The name of the building, "109", is a form of word play (goroawase, specifically numerical substitution) and is taken from the Japanese characters "tō" (meaning 10) and "kyū" (9) as in "Tōkyū".