As a multicultural wave of new investors and residents begins to reshape Little Tokyo, many community leaders are hailing a Los Angeles city recommendation to sell the last large undeveloped land parcel in the area to a development team led by Japanese Americans.
The competition for the land at 1st and Alameda streets is seen as a critical test of the Japanese American community's ability to strongly influence the future development of its cultural core, the neighborhood its immigrant pioneers first settled a century ago.
In recent months, several signature properties have been sold to non-Japanese owners, including the former New Otani Hotel, Japanese Village Plaza and Little Tokyo Shopping Center. Growing numbers of non-Japanese residents in the new condo and apartment buildings nearby, along with a spate of frozen yogurt, pasta, sandwich and other non-Japanese shops, are also diversifying the historic Japanese American ethnic enclave.
The changes have brought the area new vitality but have also sparked anxiety among some Little Tokyo leaders and raised the stakes for control of the 4.5-acre parcel, know as the Mangrove site.
The selection panel of city and community members is expected to issue its report as early as this week outlining why it chose the Nikkei Center team, led by the Little Tokyo Service Center, Kaji & Associates, Urban Partners and others, to buy the Mangrove site. The City Council must approve the recommendation.
"Not to take anything away from the other contenders, but the Little Tokyo Service Center and other partners have been longtime members in the community whom we've worked with and whom we assume will have great accountability," said Chris Aihara, chair of the Little Tokyo Community Council.
The council, made up of about 100 area businesses, nonprofit agencies, religious institutions and residents, endorsed the proposal by the Nikkei Center last year.
The team has proposed a mixed-use project of housing, office space and retail that would showcase Japan's fashionable modern face of anime, fashion, design and high-tech electronics. A media court with giant outdoor screens, similar to those in Shinjuku and other hip Tokyo neighborhoods, is also envisioned.
Embracing a global definition of "Nikkei" -- a word that connotes both Japanese heritage and the Japanese economy -- developers hope to recruit the sizable ethnic Japanese communities in Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America to open shops or businesses in the center, according to Jon Kaji of Kaji & Associates, a South Bay consulting firm and Nikkei Center partner.
