Chinese Cultural Center a Step Closer to Reality

After several months of searching, community leaders in Chinatown have gingerly taken the first step toward establishing a long-sought cultural center in the historic neighborhood.

In two votes this week, one by the “founding board of directors” for a center and a second Thursday night by a local community group, the leaders selected a tentative site and developer.

As a result, officials at the Community Redevelopment Agency, which has targeted a cultural center as part of its redevelopment program for Chinatown, will begin contract negotiations with the Lippo Group, an Indonesian-Chinese banking institution that plans a $30-million to $50-million development on the three-acre site of a former school on Hill Street near Ord Street.

Bank Headquarters

Lippo plans to put headquarters for its Bank of Trade there, along with additional commercial and retail buildings, according to Virginia White, assistant to the chief executive officer of the bank. “This would be a component of the development,” White said of the offer to locate the center there. She described it as a “good-will gesture” to the Chinatown community.

The center would include a theater, multipurpose community rooms, classrooms and an exhibit hall, according to community leaders.

The community has been eager to have a cultural center in Chinatown for more than 10 years, even though only about 10,000 people of Chinese descent live there, out of more than 200,000 estimated in the Southern California area.

“Los Angeles Chinatown is still the heart and soul of the Chinese community,” said Munson Kwok, past president of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California who serves on both committees working on the project. “It’s still the magnet, the spiritual center of our culture.”

While the Chinatown community in the past has raised money to set up its own branch library and more recently $300,000 to buy property for a police substation there, it has not pulled together for a multimillion-dollar venture of this kind. “This project will probably be the biggest Chinatown will ever be faced with,” said Victor Huey, an aide to City Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who represents the area.

June 30 Deadline

The community was under time pressure to pick a site and developer by June 30 or face losing $1.1 million in Community Redevelopment Agency bond money that was set aside in 1985 for a cultural center.

After the agency notified the Chinatown Community Advisory Committee, a group that advises the Community Redevelopment Agency on plans for Chinatown, of the deadline last fall, Kwok said, that group began to mobilize to find a site and builder. In January Molina appointed another committee, now known as the founding board of directors of the Chinese Cultural and Community Center of Greater Los Angeles, to focus on the location, developer, program and financing.

The board Tuesday chose Lippo out of five proposals submitted. “We still have several things to iron out,” Irvin Lai, its vice chairman, said. “We don’t know our location (within the Lippo development), how much they’re going to be volunteering and how much we have to bring to it.”

As part of its selection vote, Chairman Wilbur Woo said, the board placed a 45-day time limit on talks with Lippo “to satisfy some of the conditions we want.”

The board’s choice was endorsed by the community advisory committee although its members were clearly skeptical and wary about all the unknowns, particularly financial, of the venture.