City Council Votes 10-0 for Nikkei Center
By GWEN MURANAKA
RAFU ENGLISH EDITOR IN CHIEF
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

Little Tokyo-led group wins rights to develop 4.5 acre Mangrove Estates.

A rendering of Nikkei Center to be built at First and Alameda streets.  

Nikkei Center received official ap­proval on Friday, Aug. 15 with the Los Angeles City Council voting 10-0 to select the team of Kaji and Associates, Little To­kyo Service Center and Urban Partners to develop the 4.5 acre site at First and Alameda streets.

“Now it’s final. Little Tokyo has its big project and now it’s time for us to get busy,” said Jonathan Kaji, following the City Council meeting.

The motion passed without discus­sion by the City Council in the final session before its two-week summer recess. Nikkei Center is to be built on the site known as Mangrove Estates, currently a city parking lot and one of the last open parcels in Little Tokyo. It consists of 390 units of mixed-income rental housing (40 for seniors, 70 for low income households), 180,000 square feet of office space, 80,000 square feet of retail space and 1,286 parking spaces. The office space is tentatively planned as the headquarters for L.A. Care Health Plan, a health maintenance organization created to provide public health benefits to under-served communities.

Nikkei Center LLC will purchase the property from the city for $44 million, ac­cording to the final report issued July 30 by the Chief Legislative Analyst’s (CLA) of­fice. The Little Tokyo-led group has until March 1, 2009, with two optional 90-day extensions, to finalize the agreement.

“Now we’ll have to get into the spe­cifics of the project with the city. Nego­tiating the actual purchase of the land, getting approval for our plans — all before we can start construction,” said Kaji. “So the process will take at least another year to year and a half.”

If Nikkei Center fails to reach an agreement with the city, the city can turn to the second and third highest scoring developers: First and Alameda Partners, LLC and Tokyo ArtPark Crossing, LLC. Nikkei Center was picked from three fi­nalists who were selected out of five bids received by the CLA following a request for proposals issued in August 2007. The competing finalists had the opportunity to file an appeal following the notifica­tion of the CLA’s selection on June 24; however no appeals were filed.

Kaji said that the group would be celebrating the decision. The successful bid followed a number of high-profile purchases in Little Tokyo by outside in­vestors, including Japanese Village Plaza, Little Tokyo Shopping Center and the former New Otani Hotel and Gardens.

Nikkei Center will also be at a criti­cal commercial juncture within the city. The future site of a Gold Line light rail station, Metro is also looking at the intersection as the site of a proposed regional connector, which would link the Gold, Blue and Expo lines.

“It’s a huge win for Little Tokyo, for the Japanese American community and think the impact of a $300 million proj­ect on businesses and professionals in the JA community will have enormous benefits,” said Kaji. “I was always hope­ful that we would succeed in this effort, but there were many points along this lengthy process where we could have dropped out for any number of reasons. I think that goes to the gaman spirit of our local team.”

Jonathan’s father Bruce Kaji, founder of the Japanese American National Museum and a longtime advocate of JA investment in Little Tokyo, also attended the council meeting.

“Finally a project that Japanese Americans can point to where they have a direct relationship to bringing forth a major, major attraction to Little Tokyo,” Bruce said. “It also will give the JA com­munity a chance to invest in bringing this about and by doing so it will benefit all the nonprofits in the area.”