End of an Era: Mitsuwa to Close Jan. 25
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU STAFF WRITER
Friday, January, 9, 2009

Once the dominant retail presence in Little Tokyo, the store has fallen victim to the economy and location.

MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
A sign notifies customers that Mitsuwa Marketplace in Little Tokyo is closing effective Jan. 25.

The changing face of Little Tokyo is about to undergo another drastic altera­tion. In an announcement that has been widely expected, the Mistuwa Mar­ketplace in the Little Tokyo Shopping Center will close its doors on Jan. 25.

The move comes as little surprise, as it has been seen as imminent since the troubled mall was purchased last May by a group of six Korean American investors.

Somewhat unexpectedly however, is the stance on the part of Mitsuwa and the mall ownership that that this may not be the end of Mitsuwa’s presence there.

“It’s still under negotiation and noth­ing is finalized yet,” Howard Chang, a property manager at Coldwell Banker who represents the Little Tokyo Shop­ping Center owners, said on Thursday. “They may stay in business, but there’s a good chance they’ll move out and a new store will replace them. Nothing is decided yet,” he said.

Chang added that negotiations and details will be finalized next week and that the plaza owners–who have stead­fastly maintained anonymity–are seek­ing to fill the vacated space with what he termed and “upscale international grocery market.”

Noriyoshi Miata, a spokesman at Mitsuwa’s corporate office in Torrance, confirmed that negotiations are ongoing and that its future at the Little Tokyo Shopping Center should be determined next week.

What is certain is that the Little Tokyo Mitsuwa–in its present form–will close on the 25th. Signs in the store and a posting on their company’s Web site thank customers for the support since the store opened under the name Yaohan in 1985. The store began discounting mer­chandise Friday and will make deeper cuts beginning next week.

The mall ownership also has plans for redeveloping the exterior of the plaza, renaming it the Little Tokyo Galleria and adding an Italian restaurant and a 20,000 square-foot spa.

Though Chang would not provide confirmation, it has been widely ru­mored that the 40,000 square-foot Mitsuwa location will be replaced by H Mart, a Korean supermarket that oper­ates some 22 stores across the United States. The stores are generally found in areas with large Korean American populations, such as the Diamond Bar branch here in Southern California.

Chie Nakamura, who was stocking up at Mitsuwa on Thursday, said she travels regularly from her home in Woodland Hills to shop there and was saddened by the store’s closing.

“It’s really a shame. This market is really indispensable for Japanese prod­ucts,” she said. “I live in the Valley and there’s no Japanese market there, so I’ve been coming here since it was Yaohan.”

Shop owners in the mall, who have seen foot traffic slow to a bitter trickle in recent years, are mostly hopeful that any new tenant that can anchor the 250,000 square-foot center will bring an influx of customers.

“I don’t think it matters who moves in, as long as we work together to bring in new customers,” said one business owner, who declined to be identified. She expressed concern about the ability of any store to bring shoppers to a location that borders Skid Row and an industrial district and is blocks away from the center of Little Tokyo, an area that has seen a recent resurgence in tourism and residency.

Another business owner, who also wished to remain un­named, echoed that concern, wondering if those interested in a Korean market would flock to a less appealing site, when there are many nicer areas with similar stores. She said she would rather see a mainstream supermarket chain, which is nowhere to be found in the immediate vicinity.

“I see people who live down here, in the apartments in the art district, riding the Dash bus coming back from Downtown with their bags from Ralphs,” she explained. “That’s what we need here. This place is dead, like a cemetery.”

While speaking with the Rafu last October, Eiji Morishita, owner of the Sushi Go 55 restaurant and president of the Merchants Association of the Little Tokyo Shopping Center, said the change in mall ownership is welcome, as long as a measure of its identity is retained.
“If they put money into it and help to make it better, that’s great, if they keep part of the Japanese personality,” Morishita said.

For many tenants, however, the relationship with the mall’s new owners has been marred by a lack of open communica­tion, according to several of the merchants. The secrecy surrounding the ownership, along with uneven and heavy-handed dealings with individual tenants led one shopkeeper to describe the ownership’s management style as “somewhere between the Majestic 12 and the Three Stooges.” It is the fear of reprisals from the management that has led to tenants requesting anonymity for this story.

A tenant who has had a store in the Little Tokyo Plaza since before the sale in May said the new ownership has presented him with outrageous terms to extend his lease, including thousands of dollars in unexplained “fees.” He described as “tactless” the behavior of the management, who he said had been bringing prospective tenants into shops, taking measure­ments and snapping photographs during business hours.

Morishita added that he feels that his business has been treated fairly by the new management, although they want merchants to commit to much higher rents, a tough sell in a mall where the vacancy rate is just shy of 50 percent.

“The main thing is sales, but with foot traffic the way it is now, that’s hard to justify,” he said.

For many, the disappearance of Mitsuwa is a forceful reminder of the cultural change in Little Tokyo, one that has seen the number of traditionally Japanese businesses dwindle. Mitsuwa, since its days as Yaohan, has been an anchor of the ethnically Japanese businesses here, opening as a full-service Japanese department store, offering everything from clothing and groceries to major appliances and furniture.

But the local demographics have shifted over the decades. By some estimates, 30 percent of businesses in Little Tokyo are now run by Koreans, while waiting lists for the area’s low-income and senior housing projects show a vast majority of Korean names. The New Otani Hotel and Gardens was sold to a group of non-Japanese investors in 2007 and several new stores catering to a wider target clientele have opened, such as the American Apparel clothing store.

Still, the loss of an iconic Japanese store is a slap in the face for many who have sought to preserve the local heritage. Frances Hashimoto, who owns the Mikawaya confection­ary was quoted in a Los Angeles Business Journal article suggesting that those wanting to open a Korean shopping center should do so in Koreatown. Though she later clarified her comments and welcomed any business that would help increase the vitality of the area, her sentiment is shared by many for whom Little Tokyo is their cultural base.

“I remember coming here as a kid, to shop or hang out in the bowling alley,” said Ken Fujimori, who works in the fish department at Mitsuwa. “We kind of knew this was coming. The customers are scared,” he said.