A Thousand Chinese Restaurants In The San Gabriel Valley? Is That Too Many? (Or Maybe Not Enough.)

Who knows how many Chinese restaurants there are in the San Gabriel Valley (99% of which serve authentic Chinese food)?   That topic came up over a decade ago when Frank Shyong wrote his front page, Column One Los Angeles Times profile of me.  At that time we settled on a number ranging from 600 to 800 Chinese restaurants.  This was based on the fact that there were about 600 San Gabriel Valley Chinese restaurant members of a Chinese restaurant trade group, and about 600 Chinese restaurants listed in the San Gabriel Valley Chinese Yellow Pages.  Taking into account that there would be Chinese restaurants which were part of both listings, just one listing, or neither of the listings, we settled on an upper limit of 800 restaurants.  In the decade plus since then, the number of Chinese restaurants has increased as Chinese have moved into parts of the San Gabriel Valley which originally had few Chinese, so a number of 1,000 or more Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley would seem to be reasonable.

Whatever the number, at first blush there seem to be warning signs that the number of existing Chinese restaurants may be excessive.  In particular, the number of vacant restaurant locations in some of the most iconic shopping edifices in the San Gabriel Valley is startling.  The three story partially enclosed  and spacious Atlantic Place mall on the northwest corner of Atlantic Blvd. and Garvey Ave. in Monterey Park, built in 1986 and originally anchored by the massive Harbor Village Seafood restaurant, and once home to many restaurants, is totally moribund with not even a handful of tenants of any kind in the entire complex, and no Chinese restaurants.  Perhaps the starkest evidence is the space at the top of the escalator to the second level, once home to the grandest banquet restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, first occupied by the Hong Kong based Harbor Village, later succeeded by Empress Harbor and then Tang Gong, along with three other Asian restaurants.  Today those spaces are completely empty.

 

 

Meanwhile, next door at the Mar Center, the entire second floor once occupied by the 900 seat Ocean Star Seafood restaurant has been vacant for over five years, with no sight of ever being leased out.  And shockingly, three blocks up the street at Atlantic Times Square, which was built only in 2010, has already turned into a white elephant, though some vacant spots have recently been re-leased.   While it still draws crowds to the movie multiplex, a majority of its dozen restaurant spaces are vacant, as are many of its retail spaces.

Meanwhile in San Gabriel, what was the crown jewel of the San Gabriel Valley, San Gabriel Square a.k.a. Focus Plaza, built in 1992 on the site of a former drive-in movie theater, is meeting a similar fate.  With space for more than a dozen Chinese restaurants, it quickly became the closest thing in the San Gabriel Valley to a downtown gathering spot.  Brightly lit on a Saturday night, the major worry was whether you would be able to find a parking space in its massive surface parking lot or the underground parking area.  While this center, being rechristened as Tawa Marketplace, has been under renovation for two years, something has gone terribly wrong.  The culinary highlight of San Gabriel Square was the second floor dining area, which accommodated 8 to 10 restaurants.  Now, the main escalator and stairs have been blocked off.

 

Many restaurants temporarily relocated out during the renovation with the promise of returning when the work was done.  But while much of the renovation has been completed, none of these restaurants have returned.   It would not be surprising if when finished, the updated Tawa Marketplace contains a lot fewer eating places than which operated at San Gabriel Square/Focus Plaza during its heyday.

 

 

Yet paradoxically, despite these dire pictures from the Chinese megamalls, there are other signs to indicate a shortage of suitable restaurant storefronts.  For the most part, aside from the noted megamalls, when a Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley closes it is instantaneously replaced by a new Chinese restaurant.  It’s as if there’s a waiting list for those locations to open up.  And aside from the structures noted at the start of this article, banners for RESTAURANT SPACE FOR LEASE are next to non-existent in the San Gabriel Valley.  But the biggest clue  as to the shortage of spaces is that many storefronts that had not been equipped for restaurant operations have recently turned into restaurants.  This includes hair salons, nail parlors, bookstores, dress shops, bedding stores and general business service stores.

Note there is a sizable number of Chinese food purveyors in the San Gabriel Valley that do not operate out of a fixed retail location.  The summertime 626 Night Market is full of these, and there are Chinese food trucks, as well as home based, delivery and/or drop off Chinese food purveyors.  Many of these do historically graduate to brick and mortar restaurant locations, but perhaps a lack of sufficient restaurant locations delays the process.

New strip shopping centers do continue to be developed throughout the San Gabriel Valley, both in the longtime core Chinese American communities, as well as new neighborhoods seeing the arrival of Chinese American residents.  And generally speaking these new properties do not seem to have trouble attracting Chinese restaurant tenants, adding to the stock of operating Chinese restaurants.  So what explains this dichotomy between dead restaurant space and the seeming insufficiency of suitable restaurant locations?

Clearly there's a reason for onetime shining dining and shopping palaces become white elephants in a fairly short period of time.  As a layperson with regards to both restaurant operations and real estate operations, I can only guess, and my guess is that it has something to do with accessibility.  The commonality among the white elephant structures is that they have large parking lots, either large parking structures or a combination of surface and underground parking.  The result is that people who drive into the parking facility may be faced with a considerable walk to reach their restaurant.  Compare this to the average strip mall or storefront Chinese restaurant, where diners can find a parking space close by their destination, either in strip mall parking lot or on the street.  This may or may not be the explanation, but it's the only one that comes to my mind.  And indeed there are some some shopping centers in the San Gabriel Valley with fairly sizable parking lots where there are no restaurant space vacancies.  One might point to the regional mall in Arcadia formerly known as Westfield Santa Anita which has done well in hosting various Chinese eateries.  However regional malls are an animal by themselves with many in distress but others finding a niche as dining districts.  

As for me, having eaten at the vast majority of the thousand or more Chinese restaurants operating in the San Gabriel Valley, as well as their predecessors starting from the pioneering Kin Kwok in Monterey Park some 50 years ago, I'm just happy to keep having new Chinese restaurants to eat at.