Preserving Cultural Legacy in LA’s Little Tokyo
Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) provides social and community development services primarily in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo Historic District.
NFF made a $4 million loan as part of $12 million in financing with two other CDFIs to construct the First Street North project, which will house legacy businesses and provide much-needed affordable and permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles.
For more than a century, the sweet aroma of freshly made mochi has wafted from Fugetsu-Do’s doors in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood. As the oldest Japanese American business in the nation, this family-owned bakery has witnessed the neighborhood's resilience through a century of change. But like many historic businesses in Little Tokyo, Fugetsu-Do faces a modern challenge: rapid development is driving up rents and threatening to displace the very establishments that give the neighborhood its soul.
Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) is working to ensure these cultural landmarks remain part of the community’s future. Founded in 1979 by Japanese American activists, LTSC provides social and community development services in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo Historic District and neighboring Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Today, LTSC serves about 10,000 clients annually – 90% of whom are low income.
In partnership with the City of Los Angeles and Go For Broke National Education Center, a nonprofit that educates people about Japanese American World War II veterans, LTSC is embarking on its most ambitious project yet, transforming a decades-old parking lot into a mixed-use development that will include 248 affordable housing units and 45,000 square feet of commercial space.
Located on a federally designated historic block, First Street North will house several legacy businesses from the surrounding Little Tokyo community. In addition to preserving a place for Fugetsu-Do, the commercial space will also welcome other beloved establishments like Suehiro Café, a family-owned restaurant serving Japanese comfort food, the East West Players theater group – the nation’s longest-running Asian American theater – and more.
Financing such an ambitious project required creative collaboration from mission-aligned partners. Where traditional lenders might have hesitated due to LTSC’s commitment to providing below-market rent to legacy businesses, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) stepped up.
NFF made a $4 million loan in participation with two other CDFIs, Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) and leader lender Genesis LA, in a $12 million financing package to construct the First Street North project.
The project will not only preserve local businesses and create much-needed affordable housing in Los Angeles, but also create a permanent headquarters and exhibit space for Go For Broke National Education Center as well as provide additional office space for LTSC’s growing supportive services department. Through this project, LTSC and Go For Broke National Education Center are helping preserve the cultural and historic legacy of the Little Tokyo neighborhood for generations to come, from the heart of the community.
Hear from Athena Lew, Director, Underwriting, NFF; Tom De Simone, President & CEO, Genesis LA; Takao Suzuki, Director of Community Development, LTSC; and Mitch Maki, President & CEO, Go For Broke National Education Center on how collaborative community financing brought this project to fruition to preserve Little Tokyo’s history and secure its legacy.
Transcript
Takao Suzuki:
Little Tokyo is a very diverse community. Historically and even currently, it serves as an entry point for immigrants and people of various backgrounds. It’s the second oldest community and neighborhood here in Los Angeles. At the same time, Little Tokyo was named as one of the 11 most endangered neighborhoods in America.
My affinity to Little Tokyo goes back to my childhood. As a second-generation immigrant, I grew up here. I went to school, elementary school here. Because of the language and cultural barriers, my parents really sought out Little Tokyo as a safe haven and they opened up a small business here.
Little Tokyo is home to over 400 small businesses. And an example is Fugetsu-Do. They’re a 120-plus-year-old business, and they’re the oldest Japanese American business in the nation. I really consider small businesses to be the social economic engine of any community. What we’re trying to do here is really to help support small businesses.
Athena Lew:
Since its founding in 1979, Little Tokyo Service Center has been contributing to community building and development and revitalization of the neighborhood.
Takao Suzuki:
Our mission as a service center is to preserve the cultural and historical legacy of the neighborhood. We initially began as predominantly just a social service agency, serving monolingual Japanese-speaking seniors. Since then, throughout the 1980s, we’ve expanded our services and our scope. We do affordable housing. We provide small business assistance. We still do community organizing and planning. And we’ve expanded our work to touch all throughout the city of L.A.
Tom De Simone:
We’ve been seeing a lot of historic businesses in Little Tokyo have to relocate or go out of business because rents increase or different owners come into the property and they have a different idea for the property.
Takao Suzuki:
Suehiro is one of the oldest legacy businesses here in Little Tokyo. My earliest and fondest memory was at Suehiro back in the 1970s, having a meal there with my parents and family. And unfortunately, recently, they had to be displaced because of the rising rents.
Tom De Simone:
It’s really important to make sure that the institutions, the businesses who made the neighborhood great in the first place and a place that people wanted to come back to are part of the story of the future, just like they were of the past.
Mitch Maki:
So “go for broke” was the motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. And “go for broke” essentially means to go all in to, you know, put everything on the line. And that’s the motto and the feeling that the soldiers adopted during World War II, because they knew that there was so much more on the line than just a bet. It was their freedom. It was their future and the future of those that they loved.
As many of us know, during World War II, Japanese Americans were incarcerated based solely on the color of their skin and their ancestry. This is a mistake that we as a nation can’t afford to make again. The story of what happened to Japanese Americans, the story of how the sons and daughters of immigrants still chose to serve their nation and become the most highly decorated unit in American military history, is a story that’s full of lessons for all Americans today as we face so many challenges in our nation.
So the Go For Broke monument was built in 1999. And so for 25 years, it essentially sat in the middle of a parking lot. And there had always been plans and dreams of building some type of facility right next to the monument. But through our work with Little Tokyo Service Center, we dreamt of something larger. We said, “Why not build something that serves the needs of Little Tokyo and also serves the needs of Los Angeles?”
So together, we came up with a plan of creating a five-story building, 330,000-square-feet that will house legacy businesses and restaurants, give Go For Broke a permanent place for our organization, and, very excitedly, 248 units of affordable housing that will begin to address the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles.
Takao Suzuki:
Currently it’s a federally designated historic block. Before World War II, it was considered the heart of Little Tokyo. There were thousands of residents living on the block. And unfortunately, in the 1940s and 1950s, because of urban renewal, the city razed most of the block. And it’s been sitting as a parking lot for decades. And because of that, we see this as an opportunity to reclaim the block. It’s beyond a brick-and-mortar project for us. It really is a project for the community.
Tom De Simone:
So if you know the old adage, “it takes a village,” community finance is very much of that mindset. And so this project required a lot of stakeholders to come together.
Athena Lew:
It was a very complicated project. It has the affordable housing portion and then also the commercial space portion.
Tom De Simone:
We wouldn’t have been able to provide a loan of that size on our own. So collaboration was essential to really bringing that amount of financial resources into this project and making it feasible.
Athena Lew:
It was very important to partner with mission-aligned partners such as Genesis LA and Low Income Investment Fund because Little Tokyo Service Center is providing below-market rent to legacy businesses. But because of that, their project level cash flow was a lot tighter in terms of covering the debt service. For a traditional lender, they might have shied away from that. But because the partners are aligned, we were able to make it work and pull it off.
Takao Suzuki:
It really does take a village to build anything and to accomplish anything.
Mitch Maki:
And it’s different parts of the community – private, public, nonprofit – saying, “How can we do something together to serve the greater good?”
Takao Suzuki:
You know, without the support of people willing to take the risk and people willing to invest in the people and the places, really, we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this. The strength of LTSC is reliant on the strength of other organizations and really the impact that we’re able to produce, it really does take all of us to really push forward.
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