Little Saigon Family Acquires Retail Site in L.A.’s Chinatown
By EUGENE YI
Little Saigon’s Tran family, a prominent property owner in the Vietnamese enclave, has paid $8 million for Bamboo Plaza, a four-story shopping plaza in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.
Spokesman Robert Tran said the family bought the center at 988 N. Hill St. last month from Shaoul Levy, who paid $5.4 million for it in 1999.
Bamboo Plaza is seen as the northern gateway to Chinatown and is near Dodger Stadium.
The Tran family hopes to boost the appeal of the plaza, which houses 60,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, including the Empress Pavilion, which draws crowds of Chinese-Americans and others for dim sum.
The goal, according to Tran, is to turn the center into a meeting place for the area’s various Chinese family associations and other groups in the neighborhood.
The family recently held a four-day celebration for the lunar New Year at the newly acquired center. A large street-level space also has been devoted to a display of bonsai trees.
The Tran family owns an array of properties in Orange County, including several markets, restaurants and strip malls. Interest in the Chinatown property came because “my dad has a lot of Chinese friends in Chinatown,” Tran said.
The Tran family’s A Chau supermarket in Fountain Valley made news in early January when 1,000 pounds of beef were recalled from the store because of a remote chance of mad cow infection.
The family also owns and runs Little Saigon Supermarket in Westminster and two Vanco Food markets in Garden Grove and Fountain Valley.
Yi is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly newspaper serving Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods.
