There is a horrifying trend in Vancouver’s Chinatown where more than fifty per cent of the green grocers, butchers and Cantonese restaurants have closed in the past eight years. When you think of Chinatown, it is these specific businesses that animate the area and give it a unique cultural character. Wanyee Lee is reporting in Metro News the results of the Hua Foundation findings that as these merchants age out of the area, replacement businesses are appealing to a different customer, not the Chinatown customers looking for inexpensive food, familiar fruits, and the social aspects of shopping in Chinatown. A copy of the Hua Foundation report is available here.
One of the report’s authors, Angela Ho states “The newer businesses don’t compensate for what is lost. They tend to service a higher income bracket even though they may be somewhat similar in offering Asian type food, they are catering to a different income bracket and that creates tension.”
Think of it-there were eight barbecued meat stores in Chinatown in 2009-now there are only three.Today there are only six green groceries (eleven in 2009) and twenty Cantonese restaurants left from the 36 operating in 2009. Rising real estate prices and the push for more condominium development is impacting the small Chinatown merchant, and there is no tax incentive or bonus to maintain culturally appropriate businesses in this area.
While the Hua Foundation is not implicit on how to ensure the viability of the diverse and unique Chinatown businesses, it has asked the City of Vancouver to include food assets that are cultural in their Food Policy objectives, not just communal gardens and kitchens. In the case of Chinatown, it is these specific cultural businesses that make Chinatown unique, viable, and a living history of the community that created it. Those businesses are worth protecting.
“Horrifying” seems a bit over the top to describe this trend of gentrification in Chinatown. Cordyceps are horrifying. Being jettisoned into space is horrifying. The loss of small grocery stores is maybe “disturbing”, “unsettling”, or even “really crappy”. But nobody’s starving.
However, I recall hearing about a similar trend – with similar loss rates for traditional grocers – in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Didn’t the city implement some form of protection within its zoning code? Something about land use type (grocery retail) and retail unit size limits that all but guarantee the only commercial tenants will be small grocers? Has anyone else heard of this? Did it have a rental subsidization component?
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
“Those businesses are worth protecting.”
Surely these changes also reflect the dramatic changes in the Chinese population in recent decades. The commercial center for Chinese businesses is Richmond, not Pender Street, and the new monied class is settled in West Vancouver and is more likely to shop at Osaka Park Royal.
I suppose you could create some sort of Chinatown/Granville Island hybrid, but have ask what would be the point of it? Another touristy shopping district? A weekend destitution for False Creek condo dwellers; a little bit exotic, but not TOO exotic?
If the goal is to preserve old Chinatown it’s already too late. If the goal is to provide cheap groceries to the population within walking distance it might be better to just build a big yellow No Frills.
My impression is that the decline of Chinatown isn’t the fault of developers or gentrifiers, it’s because the bulk of the Lower Mainland’s Chinese population don’t go there any more.