In its heyday, Empress Pavilion fielded an army of 100 employees that brought the restaurant to life at dawn; a crew of 20 prep cooks chopped vegetables, wrapped dumplings and crimped shumai.
When doors opened at 9 a.m., a squadron of waitresses armed with steam carts fanned out across a vast 600-seat dining room, hawking tins of black bean spare rib and har gow in three languages. The wait to get in could last two hours.
Empress Pavilion — behind on rent and struggling to find customers — closed earlier this summer, the latest blow in Chinatown's three decades of slow decline. Today the aging community has the feel of a museum. Grimy storefronts gather dust, abandoned by second- and third-generation locals and ignored by a shrinking trickle of tourists.
FOR THE RECORD:
Chinatown--An article in the July 27 A section about changes in L.A.'s Chinatown said that George Yu was the president of Chinatown's business improvement district; Yu is the vice president and executive director. The article also said that a new restaurant, Chego, took over a space formerly occupied by Mandarin Deli; the deli was located in an adjacent storefront.
But a new Chinatown is emerging — one that is less Chinese.
The neighborhood is seeing a new wave of development that is decidedly more mainstream. Developers are building more than 500 new housing units, some hoping to lure downtown types north of the 101 Freeway. A Walmart Neighborhood Market and Starbucks are slated to open this year. Dim sum palaces and gift shops are giving way to single-origin coffee, artisan pasta and pan-Asian cuisine.
A long-delayed residential and retail development broke ground in May. But its latest design has shed the Asian architectural flourishes that traditionalists say is the mark of Chinatown.
The owner of the complex that housed Empress Pavilion is hoping to lure a new dim sum restaurant, but he also hopes to bring in some Thai businesses.
Some see a model in Little Tokyo, which has remained a Japanese enclave while attracting a diverse array of businesses and visitors.
"Why shouldn't we have a multicultural Chinatown?" asked George Yu, president of Chinatown's business improvement district. "Why shouldn't we have a good cup of [Starbucks coffee]? Little Tokyo has two of them, and no one says anything about that."
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People have been writing Chinatown's obituary for decades now.
It began in the early 1980s, when booming Chinese enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley drained Chinatown of people and business. Monterey Park was declared the new Chinatown, and since then the epicenter of Chinese American life in the Southland has moved steadily east.
In the 1990s, an influx of Southeast Asian immigrants brought some new business to Chinatown, but the area's economic trajectory remained unchanged — even after the Gold Line light-rail station opened.
Census data shows that the area's overall Asian population has been steady over the last decade, with the population of Mainland Chinese declining by just 4%.
But the feel of the neighborhood is starting to change. Bars serving craft beer and boba and snacks and restaurants are surfacing amid a sea of dilapidated gift shops and souvenir stores. Starry Kitchen, a pop-up pan-Asian restaurant, has set up shop inside the Grand Star Jazz Club. General Lee's, a century-old Chinatown restaurant closed for two decades, reopens as a bar in August with a design by the same firm responsible for Culver City's Akasha and Hatfield's in Hollywood.
And on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, the Jia Apartments, a 280-unit residential development, will open later this summer with a Starbucks and an artisan pasta restaurant on the first floor. Blossom Plaza, a $95-million project, will add 237 new units and several new storefronts when it opens in 2016.
Many of the new units are aimed at downtown Los Angeles' fastest growing demographic — young professionals. Chinatown doesn't have Spring Street's bars or the loud glamour of L.A. Live, but the neighborhood is no longer eerily silent after sunset.
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