Oakland Chinatown Enjoying Renaissance
By Cathy Lee

Oakland’s Chinatown, the city’s third largest shopping area in terms of sales tax revenue, hopes that a planned business-hotel complex will help it hold on to its attraction amid growing competition from suburban Asian-themed malls and superstores.

The district, which includes Ninth Street between Broadway and Harrison, can get thousands of visitors in a typical weekend. In just eight city blocks, more than 600 merchants sell a wide assortment of exotic foods, jewelry, artwork and other goods. Authentic Asian music and drama is performed regularly in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza, at Ninth and Franklin streets.

The city’s Community and Economic Development Agency has worked with the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and other community groups to make sure that the neighborhood, settled more than a century ago by immigrant miners, continues its upward track after the citywide malaise of the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

“We have worked closely with our public officials and a variety of city and county departments to improve conditions of the community,” said Jennie Ong, executive director of the chamber.

Alex Greenwood, whose Community and Economic Development Agency works closely with the chamber and other community groups, concurred. “We are trying to create Oakland Chinatown as a unique street environment than any other place to shop and do business in Northern California.”

City officials and community groups have crafted a marketing plan for the neighborhood that included last week’s Oakland Chinatown StreetFest.

To foster improved and expanded development, the Community and Economic Development Agency sold the land at about $300,000 under cost to a hotel developer.

“This was an independently drafted deal, and the OCCC supported the project,” Greenwood said.

Park Lane Hotels International expects to break ground on its five-story, 160-room business hotel next spring, though cost estimates and a target completion date are still being worked out, according to Bill Morton, senior vice president of Park Lane Hotels International.

That’s good news for what Ong calls one of Oakland’s “most economically vibrant neighborhoods and generates a huge tax base for the city. It has been called the epicenter for the downtown development.”

The marketing plan is angled toward getting more visitors to come to Chinatown to compete with other Asian malls in suburban cities. “Surrounded by Asian mini-malls and Ranch 99s in the Bay Area suburbs, such as the Pacific East Mall in Richmond and McCarthy Ranch in Milpitas, Chinatown needs to be on the competitive edge,” Ong said.

Oakland Chinatown is unique among many, Ong said. “Unlike Chinatowns across the U.S., which are usually located in the worst part of cities and are not easy to find, Oakland Chinatown has accessibility and visibility,” she said. “It sits in the heart of the city.”

The district itself is becoming more diverse. According to Greenwood, 282,000 Asian Americans live in Alameda County. “In another five years, we expect a 28 percent increase in the Asian American population,” he said.

“Another reason for Chinatown’s success is that it’s a working community with the primary purpose of serving the needs of the Asian population,” Ong continued. Services have changed with the increasingly pan-Asian flavor of the neighborhood itself. “Most of the jewelry stores are owned by majority Vietnamese and Chinese-Vietnamese.”