Whose Chinatown?

BACKSTORY: Area’s future may not include those who built it

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Dec 19, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

JIM CLARK / Portland Tribune

Gloria Lee, executive director of the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, says she wishes it had more of a following among local Chinese, but she is heartened by the fact that one in four of the garden’s volunteers are Asian, compared to one in 20 five years ago.

On first glance, the Pacific Tower, at the corner of Northwest Fourth Avenue and Flanders Street, looks like most other apartment buildings. A little less glass, a little more brick than some of its neighbors a few blocks to the west and north, in the Pearl District.

A closer look makes the building more intriguing. Little bits of design – Chinese letters inscribed on an outside wall, bamboo in the upstairs garden – reveal a building leaning toward an Asian motif. Nothing dramatic, just a hint that some not-so-obvious intention went into the design of this building.

And since the Pacific Tower stands 16 stories tall in Chinatown, a block away from the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, the design starts to make sense.

The tenants, at least most of them, were supposed to be Asian. The developers of the Pacific Tower, working with public officials who helped subsidize the building’s construction, intended a building that would induce elderly Chinese to live in Chinatown.

But stick around and watch the front door of the Pacific Tower open and close. The people coming in and out of the apartments are not Asian. Most are young, in their 20s or 30s. And they’re not wealthy young– the building received public money to provide affordable housing.

Jimmie Luey, a retired architect and longtime Chinatown activist who was part of a citizens advisory board that advised the Pacific Tower’s developers, smiles when asked why the Chinese seniors failed to come live in this Chinatown building designed for them. “That’s a good question,” Luey says.

Suenn Ho, an urban designer who also consulted on the building, says, “I personally walked 120 seniors into Pacific Tower when it opened (in 2003) and they all asked for applications.” Asked for an explanation of why they didn’t take residence, Ho says, “I don’t know. People were excited about it. There were a slew of reasons.”

Among those reasons are a lack of parking in the neighborhood, fear of crime in the streets due to the abundance of social service agencies in the area, and the absence of an Asian grocery store.

Some Chinatown leaders say the apartments weren’t priced right to appeal to Chinese residents. None of those conditions changed, however, from when construction started on the Pacific Tower.

If the Pacific Tower is any indication, Chinese people don’t appear interested in living in Chinatown. Despite a clamor for public investment to reinvigorate the area, the majority of property owners in Chinatown aren’t spending their own money to fix up their properties.

That doesn’t mean Chinatown doesn’t have a revitalized future. It just may not be a Chinese future.

In the end, neighborhood leaders and others say, Chinatown may never again have a heavy Chinese population for one primary reason: People – not developers, not community activists, not urban designers – decide where and how they want to live.

Garden losing visitors

In September, the Under the Autumn Moon festival brought more people to Chinatown than any event in decades, upward of 35,000, according to festival organizers.

The festival was held to celebrate the opening of Chinatown’s two new festival streets, Northwest Third and Fourth avenues between Burnside and Glisan streets, along with sculptures and landscaping that cost the Portland Development Commission $5.4 million.

In the eyes of many Chinatown leaders, the festival and the new street designs would herald a new beginning in their neighborhood.

That PDC investment was on top of the more than $6 million the city collected through local improvement district taxes to help build the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, the one Chinatown attraction that, since its 2000 opening, is drawing both tourists and local residents. But even at the garden, attendance has declined each year, from 285,000 visits in 2001 to 127,000 last year.

Gloria Lee, the garden’s executive director, says she wishes the garden had more of a following among local Chinese, but she is heartened by the fact that one in four of the garden’s volunteers are Asian, compared to one in 20 five years ago.

Those Asian volunteers have to drive or take public transit to the garden. “Nobody lives in Chinatown anymore. It’s a business district,” says Michael Cheng, past president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a Chinatown-based organization that for more than a century has represented the interests of the Chinese community.

Nearly three months after the Autumn Moon festival, a resurgent Chinese influence is hard to find in Chinatown. Three key businesses have left the Fourth Avenue core recently – including Hung Far Low restaurant, a neighborhood institution.

Vacant storefronts along Fourth Avenue speak of a continued decline rather than rebirth. But some Chinese community leaders say revitalization may yet occur if they can get more help. There are others who wonder if all the help in the world will be enough.

Searching for an identity

Tom Carrollo, president of the Old Town/Chinatown Neighborhood Association, says there are plenty more people like those who live in the Pacific Tower ready to move into the Chinatown neighborhood, even with the atmosphere created by the social service agencies and the lack of parking.

“The creative class is enamored with our neighborhood,” Carrollo says, referring to educated young adults. “They like us the way we are, and they accept us the way we are. A little gritty is OK with them.”

And attracting residents, Carrollo says, is the key to stabilizing the Chinatown neighborhood. “Chinatown needs more people living there,” he says. Only permanent residents with disposable income will support the shops of a vibrant neighborhood, Carrollo says.

Carrollo, who is not Asian, says he thinks the next few years should determine what kind of development takes place in Chinatown. But Carrollo isn’t sure how much faith members of the Chinese community are showing in an Asian-based Chinatown.

“There are buildings’ owners, absentee Asians, who seem willing to let buildings stay empty. That creates blight and takes away from the environment,” Carrollo says.

Carrollo says he doesn’t know what shape Chinatown will take in the future, but he is certain the development commission and Chinatown leaders won’t have the final say.

“I don’t think you can force anything,” Carrollo says. “You don’t want to Disney-fy a Chinatown. You can create the environment that is conducive to Chinatown doing well. From there it goes out to the street level, safety issues and livability issues. But beyond that the free market has to have a play.”

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