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Merchants at Chinatown's East Broadway Mall wonder if they'll survive after its rebirth
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Oct 4, 2023
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Li Qiang for Gothamist
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Oct 4, 2023
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At the East Broadway Mall nestled under the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown, the few remaining shops sit among rows of vacant, gated storefronts.
A tailor, “Ms. Chen,” advertises hours on posters duct-taped to the metal rollup door of a closed neighboring shop. The windows of a shuttered herbal medicine shop are papered over with pages from Chinese calendars. Only 10 to 20 businesses remain of the 80 available storefronts at the city-owned property, according to Steven Wu, the president of the mall’s merchant group.
But the mall, called Yi Dong Lou in Chinese, is expected to undergo a transformation in the coming months — a $5 million gut renovation that includes a new second-floor, 800-seat banquet hall in the former 88 Palace. Officials say it could be the the neighborhood's largest dining space after the recent closure of Joy Luck Palace and Jing Fong's move to a smaller location.
It would also be the only unionized Chinese restaurant in Chinatown besides Jing Fong, said Nelson Mar, president of the local 318 Restaurant Workers Union.
Local officials and many in the community hope the renovation will reinvigorate the mall, which has been a hub for residents of the city’s Little Fuzhou neighborhood since it opened in the 1980s. But while they remain hopeful about an economic recovery for the dying mall, many longtime shop owners say they’re uncertain about their own futures and are unsure of what rents a new landlord will ultimately charge.
“It will help Chinatown in the long run,” said Kevin Feng, 55, co-operator of an antiques store in the basement, who is unsure if his own business will remain. “But for us, it’s not a good thing.”
Last week, in the final step of the city’s approval process, Mayor Eric Adams OK’d a 30-year lease for a new operator — the Broadway East Group LLC, under principal member and longtime Chinatown developer Bill Lam. The group is slated to take over from the current owner, the Broadway East Mall Inc., which defaulted on its lease in 2014, according to city court filings, and which filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The City first reported on a proposal for the new deal in August.
Though the original operator fought to retain control of the mall, including by proposing its own reorganization plan, the Bank of Hope and the city ultimately chose to hand it over to the group run by Lam.
Lam has “deep community roots, a lot of local support, and great expertise in construction, real estate and property management,” said Kyle Daniels, assistant director of asset planning at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, during a Manhattan Borough board meeting last month where members approved the lease.
The current operator owes the Bank of Hope — its mortgage lender — $5.85 million, and also owes the city more than $9 million in taxes and other fees, according to court filings from July. Under the new lease, the new operator would be required to pay the city $2 million in arrears, and another $2 million to the Bank of Hope.
The new lease will likely be signed this fall, according to Councilmember Christopher Marte, who represents the area. Renovations are expected to be complete by early 2025, he said.
“This can be a new chapter of Chinatown,” Marte said, adding the mall can also symbolize “what revitalization of Chinatown can be.”
Kevin Feng says the renovation of the East Broadway Mall will probably be good for Chinatown, but he's not sure his own business would survive any increased rents under a new owner.
Li Qiang for Gothamist
'Ghost town'
For many locals, the East Broadway Mall has come to symbolize the economic downturn Chinatown has faced in the wake of 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and, most recently, the pandemic.
Several longtime shop owners Gothamist spoke to during two recent visits said they know little, if anything, about the new plans. But many of them welcome fixes to leaky ceilings, often-clogged toilets and graffiti-covered entranceways, and hope for more foot traffic after years of falling revenues.
But the same shop owners say they’re unsure of what it will cost them.
Several merchants said the departing landlord had cut them breaks on their rents during the pandemic — in some cases allowing them to pay as little as a few hundred dollars a month. Average monthly retail rent in the borough is $50 to $55 per square foot, according to Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of the real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel.
Under the arrangement with the city, current tenants would be allowed to remain in the building at their current rents for at least two years. Marte said he’s working to negotiate that timeline to five years, which Wu says should be considered the bare minimum. He said most of the tenants’ leases are currently that long.
Anessa Hodgson, a spokesperson for DCAS, says the city is working with the incoming operator to determine whether or not the existing leases would be honored, and find a solution that’s agreeable to all parties involved.
Lawyers and representatives from the current operator, the Broadway East Mall Inc., and the incoming Broadway East Group, did not respond to requests for comment.
"We've worked here for so long, and we bring people and business to the mall," Wu said in Mandarin in an interview. "Now, after so long, we are afraid we will be kicked out."
The mall isn't completely desolate. Groups of local residents sit at folding tables in the Chinatown East Neighborhood Council office. Patrons flock to the downstairs dumpling shop Fu Zhou Wei Zhong Wei Jia Xiang Feng Wei — called "a hidden gem" in TikTok reviews — for sesame balls filled with bamboo shoots and strips of pork.
Still, some of the people who do business in the mall say they miss its heyday in the 1990s and early 2000s. Many lamented the lack of business and the state of disrepair. The mall contrasts with another, comparatively thriving mall that opened just down the street several years later. Terry Chan, general manager of the East Broadway Mall, told ABC 7 in 2021 that the newer mall got a "got a sweetheart deal" from the city and that he wanted to work out a new tax arrangement to make his space more competitive.
Marte called the East Broadway a “ghost town” in its current state. YouTube vloggers in video tours of the space call it "forgotten" and "dead.” Local state Assemblymember Grace Lee said it’s a “a blight on the neighborhood in the condition that it's been in.”
Water leaks from the ceiling outside the dumpling shop, through gaping holes where tiles used to be, according to co-owner Sheng Lu, 50.
"This mall is not functioning,” said Justin Yu, director of the Chinatown East Neighborhood Council and Democratic district leader for Assembly District 65, which also has an office in the mall.
When Wu opened his basement gift shop more than 30 years ago, he used to make $400 to $500 per day. Now, he makes just $20 to $30 per day, and has taken up side jobs like delivery gigs.
“If this mall started functioning, it will be like a locomotive to take the whole East Broadway back to [what it] used to be,” Yu added. “We want to see that happen."
Angela Li, 24, first came to the East Broadway Mall with her family as a child. She's working on an oral history of the mall, and hopes renovations serve the existing community at least as well as tourists to the area.
Li Qiang for Gothamist
‘The center of the Fujianese community’
Angela Li, 24, describes the mall’s heyday as one replete with “love stories” – blind dates and weddings in the banquet hall upstairs — and crowds of people gabbing and smoking cigars.
As a child in the early 2000s, Li would take a dollar van with her dad from Elmhurst, Queens on weekends to the stop right outside the East Broadway Mall. Saturday mornings, she’d go to Chinese prep school, and her uncle would pick her up to get a snack nearby.
Her parents, both immigrants smuggled from Fujian whose first apartment was just blocks away, would visit the mall. They’d get haircuts, buy plane tickets, send money to family in China and stop by Li’s uncles’ mahjong parlors nearby. Now, Li, a policy and advocacy staffer at Immigrant Social Services in Chinatown, is working on an oral history of the site.
She says Fujianese people were often stigmatized and excluded from other Chinatown spots, but found a home at the mall.
With the new renovations, Li wonders what will become of the shopkeepers, who are mostly elderly Fujianese immigrants. Li wondered both about the rent and whether many of the shopkeepers would decide to retire during the monthslong renovation process.
“When governments come into an ethnic enclave and say they’re going to renovate it, there’s always a gap they miss,” she said. “That’s also assuming that there isn’t already a community here.”
She acknowledged that the neighborhood’s economy, more so than Chinatowns in other boroughs, relies on tourism to survive. But Li wants the newly renovated mall and its surrounding neighborhood to be a place where the first-generation immigrants who built the mall’s community can return along with their children and grandchildren.
“Is it for the Fujianese community?” she asked. “Or is it for more tourists to come and visit?”
Jade Jiang provided Mandarin interpretation for interviews in this story.
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Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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