CHINATOWN : Group to Study How to Revive Businesses

Worried about the economic future of Chinatown, a new group of business professionals is studying the area’s needs and determining how to revive its businesses.

The Chinatown Economic Development Council took shape over the past year to keep businesses and consumers in Chinatown. Businesses and shoppers who depended on Chinatown for ethnic goods and services are going elsewhere, particularly to the booming Chinese enclaves of the San Gabriel Valley.

“This is a situation that’s been going on for several years. We need to take a serious look at what remedies and strategies there are,” said attorney William Tan, one of about 15 core members.

Asian American Economic Development Enterprises Inc., an organization that aids small businesses, has been instrumental in forming the new council.

The council’s first major step was to enlist another organization, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, to conduct a comprehensive study of the area’s economic base. The results are expected to be released in a few weeks.

Tan said the study will address such questions as “What drives Chinatown?” and “What are its shortcomings?”

After reviewing the study’s results, group members will discuss solutions. Some areas of improvement are evident, Tan said, such as the need to increase marketing efforts to battle attitudes among some consumers that Chinatown is unsafe, its goods lack value and its novelty is gone.

But a difference of opinion has already emerged, Tan said. Some say rejuvenation lies in offering more low-cost goods and swap-meet markets to consumers in recessionary times.

But Tan and others say that would be a short-term fix. Tan said a better mix and diversity of businesses may be the key to prosperity. The needs of an increasingly multiethnic community must also be considered, he said.

“The bigger picture is: ‘What do you do tomorrow?’ ” he said.

Philip Borden, executive director of Asian American Economic Development Enterprises, said one strategy is to find ways to link Chinatown to regional development and transportation projects.

For example, members of the new council have been lobbying the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about locating a light-rail station in or near Chinatown for the potential Blue Line extension to Pasadena, Borden said.

Tan said the council was not formed to compete with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and other long-established community groups. Rather, the council hopes to draw these organizations together to pull Chinatown from an economic brink, Tan said.

As Borden put it, even if the Asian community disperses throughout the county, “This is the emotional home of the Chinese in Los Angeles.”