Keep Buildings for ‘Chinatown,’ CCDC Urged

Nine turn-of-the-century buildings identified as historic examples of San Diego’s early Chinese heritage should be preserved to form a core of a downtown “Chinatown” south of G Street, Chinese residents argued Friday before the Centre City Development Corp.

The sites are located along 1st, 3rd and 4th avenues in the Marina redevelopment area. Plans call for downtown housing, but spokesmen for the Chinese community want the neighborhood turned into an Asian redevelopment area of shops and homes for about 15,000 people.

CCDC board members qualified their endorsement of the preservation effort, recommending that six buildings be nominated for local and national historic preservation, but three others be studied further before any historic site designation is imposed. The three are the Chinese Mission on 1st Avenue, the Regal and Anita hotels on 4th Avenue--which are connected and considered one building--and the Woo Chee Chong building on 3rd Avenue.

Pam Hamilton, CCDC assistant vice president, said that the owners of the three sites had not agreed to preservation of the structures. The hotels are owned by the Salvation Army, and the Chinese Mission is owned by Charles Tyson.

Hamilton said that the nine structures were among the few remaining of about 150 south-of-Broadway buildings built and owned by Chinese during the city’s development between the 1880s and 1920s. Several of the structures have been remodeled and others are in a deteriorated condition, she said. Six of the building owners have indicated an interest in renovating the old buildings for new uses under the city’s redevelopment program.

Quing Jung, speaking for a local Asian community estimated at 150,000, said that Asians had left the downtown area and moved their homes and businesses to the suburbs over past decades, “and now we want to come back downtown.”

Quing proposed that a commercial-residential area of Asiatic cultures be designated around the core of the old Chinese neighborhood between 2nd and 5th avenues from J Street to Martin Luther King Way.

Carol Lindemuller, one of the early leaders in the creation of the Gaslamp District, urged the CCDC board to seek historic designation for the entire area. Without such blanket designation, the Gaslamp Quarter never would have succeeded, she said.

Hamilton said that there are a number of other original Chinese buildings within the Gaslamp Quarter, and proposed that the area be studied with a view to creating a Chinese commercial area of both historic old buildings and compatible new ones.

Architect M. Wayne Donaldson, who conducted the analysis of the historic Chinese buildings, pointed out that San Diego is the only major West Coast city in the United States which does not have a thriving Chinatown commercial area.