Fourth & Central Plans Spark Concern

Latest pressure to gentrify Little Tokyo,
surrounding area, puts community members on high alert.

By George Toshio Johnston, Senior Editor

It has certainly been a year of note for Little Tokyo.

On one hand, the downtown Los Angeles district marked 140 years since Hamanosuke Shigeta opened a restaurant here in 1884.

As to be expected over that many years, Little Tokyo has had its peaks, periods of outward stability and troughs. Yet, it continues to be, in an emotional and spiritual sense, the still-beating heart of the diffuse and changing Japanese American (and expat Japanese) communities across Southern California — even for those who actually haven’t stepped foot on its more-often-than-not icky sidewalks in several years.

On the other hand, earlier this year, Little Tokyo also received the ignominious distinction of having been added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2024 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. This, despite the February groundbreaking of the First Street North Project (see Pacific Citizen’s April 26, 2024, issue), the dedications of the Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy and the Norman Y. Mineta Democracy Plaza (see Pacific Citizen’s Feb. 9, 2024, issue) and, in 2022, the long-gestating official opening of the Terasaki Budokan (see Pacific Citizen’s March 18, 2022, issue).

And constantly playing in the background to all that: the ever-present dissonant thrum of that tendentious term — gentrification.

Although it may be new to the younger generation, gentrification, similar to its cousin, redevelopment, is, like Little Tokyo, not new. What’s happening is simply the latest in a long-running series of machinations that seems to be baked into our system: the haves trying to make a buck at the expense of the have-nots, owners vs. renters, change vs. preservation, displacement vs. staying put, outsiders vs. incumbents.

Add politics, class, ethnicity, culture and race to the mixture and it’s akin to pouring vinegar on baking soda.

In Little Tokyo, it’s no different. 

——— Fourth & Central ———

Late in the morning on Aug. 16 at First and Spring Streets near City Hall, a gathering of about a dozen members representing Little Tokyo Against Gentrification held a news conference, with participants standing in a line while holding a long banner that read “Fight Gentrification.”

For LTAG, comprised of J-Town Action and Solidarity (“a collective dedicated to revolutionary organizing & building community power in Little Tokyo,” according to its website that also unironically hawks such merch as “Death to Capitalism” greeting cards), Save Our Seniors Network and Greater Los Angeles JACL, it was an opportunity to share with the representatives of the news media —who nearly outnumbered the participants — their opposition to a huge proposed development on the outskirts of Little Tokyo.

Another goal of the rally was to present in person to City Councilman Kevin de Leon, whose district encompasses downtown Los Angeles — including Little Tokyo and the Arts District — a demand to revisit and redo the environmental impact report required before the $2 billion mixed-use development known as Fourth & Central could commence.

Fourth & Central is the project of Denver-based Continuum Partners LLC on the 7.6-acre site owned by Los Angeles Cold Storage, a privately owned company in business since 1895.

As presently envisioned, Fourth & Central would be a 10-building project with 1,500-plus residential units; 410,000 square feet of office space; 101,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space; and a 68-room hotel, according to fourthandcentral.com, which also states: “Fourth & Central is crafted to respond to the needs of the community, including the creation of affordable housing and living wage jobs close to growing transit opportunities.”

Speakers at the LTAG news conference had a different take.

 

——— ‘Zero Awareness’ ———-

After introducing herself and saying, “I care deeply about what the future is for Little Tokyo,” facilitator Zen Sekizawa introduced the first speaker, Ana Iwataki.

After relating that she is “literally getting a Ph.D. in gentrification in Little Tokyo” at the University of Southern California, Iwataki said, “This Fourth & Central project concerns me. An environmental impact report is supposed to thoroughly research and present all the impacts on the surrounding area, including on historical and cultural resources. But historic preservation is not just about saving the facade of a building so that market rate tenants will move into it. Preserving a culture can only happen if people can afford to stay and maintain their lives.”

Iwataki added, “Little Tokyo is just a place where developers have already made money by failing to know us. They are telling us who they are. Their attitude shows zero awareness of what Little Tokyo actually is, who lives here, what makes it significant, and if they don’t know what’s here, why would they care about preserving it?”

Speaking next was David Monkawa. Expressing his concerns regarding Fourth & Central, he said, “It’s going to change Little Tokyo forever. What we see is … seven years of construction dust getting into the lungs of our children at the childcare 
center and of our seniors in Little Tokyo Towers, the largest low-income Asian housing unit on the West Coast.”

Referring to Continuum Partners founder Mark Falcone, Monkawa said, “If you’re going to come here and build your megablock, your megacity right next to Little Tokyo, you’re going to have to listen to our needs. You’re going to have to listen to the voices of people in Little Tokyo. And what we need right now is low-income housing. Lots of it.”

 

——— ‘Corporate Greed’ ———

The need for affordable housing was particularly relevant to artist Nancy Uyemura. In the 1980s, she moved into the then-inexpensive Little Tokyo-adjacent loft space in what would become known the Arts District. Over time, in a scenario that has been replayed several times in several cities arose: Artists like Uyemura helped make a once blighted area become more desirable. Then, when the inevitable hipster cachet caught on, artists with no ownership were pushed out.

“I lived two-thirds of my life in Little Tokyo, or Little Tokyo adjacent.” Uyemura said. “I was in the Arts District for over 34 years, and then we got evicted due to the gentrification that was happening in downtown L.A., especially in the Arts District.”

Uyemura was among the several artists — many also Japanese American — living at 800 Traction Ave. in the Arts District who were evicted in 2017 when New York-based private equity firm, DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, bought the building, as well as 810 Traction Ave.

Referring to the “corporate greed” that led to the owners sell the building, Uyemura noted that since being evicted, “it’s flipped over at least two or three times. The bank owns it now, and they want to try and sell it, but they just trash the building. And for someone that’s lived in that building and worked in that building and been in that neighborhood, helped create that neighborhood, it’s really heartbreaking.”

Uyemura was referring to how, after DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners bought the Traction Avenue buildings, both were resold in 2021 to New York-based Livwrk and L.A.-based Daniel Kotzer. In 2024, after Livwrk defaulted on its loan from Thorofare, the commercial real estate lender listed the properties in a foreclosure sale.

 

——- ‘Completely Disrespectful’ ——-

Getting to the main goal of the rally was next speaker, Henry Aoki of J-Town Action and Solidarity. “We’ve gathered here today to demand that there be a redo of that EIR process, of that environmental impact report process. … We’re calling on Councilmember Kevin de Leon, CD 14, to support a redo of this process. We’re calling on the (Los Angeles) Planning Department to push for a redo of this process. We believe that this process has been unjust.”

Referring to Continuum Partners, Aoki said, “We’ve seen them come to community meetings and disregard the opinions of community members. We’ve seen them claim that they’re listening, but they don’t have actual community consultants. They don’t have actual guarantees for affordable housing. They talk around issues; they don’t give us concrete details of what we’re asking for. This has been completely disrespectful.”

However, the plan to march from the corner of First and Spring Streets to de Leon’s office while participants held their banner hit a snag: Monkawa announced that he had learned the councilman was not present in his office, but that his staff had agreed to meet with LTAG representatives on Aug. 23. Nevertheless, the group used the opportunity to march to City Hall as news cameras recorded.

Although LTAG could not count that day as a victory, the situation was different some four months earlier, when many of the same participants held a victory rally a few blocks away at the previous site of Suehiro Cafe on First Street in Little Tokyo proper.

 

——- ‘Bittersweet Victory’ ——-

If there was one saga that exemplified the controversy over the destiny of Little Tokyo in the past couple of years, it was that of Suehiro Cafe, which had been in operation in Little Tokyo since 1972 but closed its doors Jan. 9 and had since reluctantly relocated to the corner of Fourth and Main Streets, several blocks away and beyond the borders of Little Tokyo.

The restaurant’s owner, Kenji Suzuki, took over the operation from his mother, Junko Suzuki, who, with his aunt, Yuriko, co-founded it. The property owner, Anthony Sperl, began eviction proceedings against Suzuki, claiming that he had failed to pay the rent. Suzuki, however, maintained that the rent checks had been sent as always in a timely manner, but that Sperl failed to cash them as a pretext to evict Suzuki and replace the eatery with a cannabis dispensary.

If there ever was a time for a group like J-Town Action and Solidarity to act, this one was tailor-made. As word of the forced departure of the beloved eatery spread, several peaceful rallies and demonstrations arose, upset not only because the seemingly unethical way in which Suehiro’s eviction was executed but also, adding insult to injury, the fact that the landlord had filed paperwork to replace it with a cannabis-related shop that was out of line with the history and tradition of Little Tokyo.

The pressure tactics worked. It was learned that Sperl’s idea to operate a cannabis business was scuttled and that a different Japanese restaurant might replace it.

So it was that on April 6, on the same afternoon that the Japanese American National Museum was holding its posh annual fundraiser just a few blocks away at the tony environs of the Vibiana (see the Pacific Citizen’s June 7, 2024, issue), members of J-Town Action and Solidarity met outside 337 E. First St. to celebrate — somewhat ruefully — a quantum of victory. Sekizawa announced to cheers that “no dispensary is coming to Little Tokyo” — and then introduced the next speaker, Aoki.

“This is, of course, a bittersweet victory for us. We stopped the dispensary. But we could not stop the eviction of Suehiro Café,” he said. Referring to news that Sperl wanted to bring a different Japanese restaurant, Aoki asked, “Now obviously, that raises the question, right? Why on earth was Suehiro Café, a Japanese restaurant, evicted just to bring in a new Japanese restaurant?

“So this, I think, points to a basic problem, right, when a few landlords, a few developers think they can just do whatever they want in this community. No developer should be allowed to decide that their own personal will trumps what means to this community, right? The community has a say. And that’s why we came out here to fight. And we are willing to fight any landlord, any developer who thinks they can treat our community like this.”

(Note: Part 2 of this story regarding the challenges facing Little Tokyo and other ethnic enclaves in the U.S. will appear in a future issue of Pacific Citizen.)