Under the direction of Wellington Chen, a new business development district, which hopes to have city authorization sometime this summer, has been formed in Chinatown. One board member calls the project “long overdue.” Indeed, tourism in Chinatown has never recovered to pre 9/11 levels (Chinatown lies in a district adjacent to the site of the destroyed World Trade Center). But change in Chinatown is harder work than it is elsewhere in an already difficult city.

Ownership is the crux of the problem. Wellington Chen, the executive director of the coming business district, now called the Chinatown Partnership, said buildings of all descriptions, including side-street tenements, are owned by “associations” of Chinese business people as well as families, many of whom have owned all or part of a building for generations. Getting all parties to agree to a sale would be nearly impossible, he said, even if all the owners could be located. Assembling multiple contiguous parcels for new construction, like three or more tenement buildings, would be extremely difficult.

“Chinatown is the Wild, Wild West when it comes to finding out who the building owners are,” said Yvonne Chang, a broker with the Kaufman Organization who is marketing leases at a two-story building at 257 Canal Street.

Landmark status on some buildings is another obstacle to development, as is the significant number of rent-controlled and rent-stabilized housing units in the area. Mr. Chen said about 4,200 of the 5,000 apartments in the neighborhood are regulated. Ousting tenants in any of the regulated buildings is out of the question, even though some building owners would like to see them go so they could raise the rent.

Chinese owners also prefer to do business within the Chinese community, another factor that gets in the way of development. “They won’t go far past who they know, and they know everybody,” Ms. Chang said. “They market among themselves.”

We like the air of paradox in Ms Chang’s comment.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 10:30 am.