10 Things You Should Know About Koreatown in Los Angeles

10 Things You Should Know About Koreatown in Los Angeles
1. City Hall officially designated the neighborhood just west of downtown L.A. as
Koreatown in 1978.
2. The “Mapping L.A.” project at latimes.com, created with input by community residents,
defines Koreatown as bordered in the north by Beverly Blvd., east by Westmoreland and
Virgil; south by Olympic Blvd.; and west by Crenshaw Blvd. and Wilton Pl, though is still
a work in progress according to the site’s commenters.
3. Koreatown is home to 340,000 people, and covers just under 5-square-miles, making it
the neighborhood with the highest population density in Los Angeles; and the third
highest in the U.S., outranked only by Midtown Manhattan and Chicago’s North Side
neighborhoods.
4. Forbes magazine rated Koreatown America’s 8th most fuel-efficient neighborhood in
2008.
5. Many Koreans arrived in Los Angeles after the change in U.S. immigration laws in 1965,
which has since made L.A. the largest Korean population center outside of Korea.
6. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 in the neighborhood now known
as Koreatown, at the Ambassador Hotel, which was demolished recently to make way
for a six LAUSD pilot schools. The site will include a Robert F. Kennedy memorial park.
7. Koreatown experienced the heaviest looting and crime of any other neighborhood during
the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.
8. While Latinos make up the majority ethnicity in Koreatown, Korean-Americans are the
single largest national demographic at 18%, followed by Mexican at 15%.
9. Two L.A. County Metro subway lines—Red and Purple— run through Koreatown, as
well as numerous Express, Rapid and local bus lines.
10. In 2006, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa brokered a $300 million deal to channel foreign
investment into Koreatown, much of it to take the form of redevelopment projects
collectively called the “Superblock” on the Wilshire corridor.
Prepared by the Southern California Leadership Network
Sources: Koreatown Wikipedia entry; Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982;
latimes.com; City of Los Angeles
The yen ruled the ’80s. Now it’s
the won’s turn. Hard-charging
K-Town locals and Korean
nationals defy the downturn
| By Kai Ma |
| Photography by Spencer Lowell |
TOWER POWER
From left: Korean Air’s
planned high-rise
development in
downtown’s Financial
District; the proposed
Daniel Libeskind design
to be erected near the
Staples Center.
52 | Angeleno | August 2009
Perhaps the two most striking
recent examples of this vertiginous
surge were the pair of downtown plans
announced mere days apart in April,
despite a recession that’s delayed several
other prominent projects in the area,
including Frank Gehry’s Grand Avenue
mixed-use fantasia across from Disney
Hall. First, Korean Air trumpeted
a $1 billion proposal to build two
new LEED-certified skyscrapers—a
40-floor hotel-condo building and a
60-story office edifice—and then a
consortium of South Korean investors
announced its world-class architectural
coup: a 43-floor tower along Figueroa,
designed in typically angular style by
none other than acclaimed World Trade
Center visionary Daniel Libeskind. The
airline’s plan will replace one of the
company’s local property holdings,
the aging Wilshire Grand hotel in the
Financial District, while the Libeskind
structure will rise a bit farther south,
adjacent to the Staples Center.
The last time Asian money poured
into downtown L.A. real estate in such a
significant fashion was during the shortlived Japanese boom of the late ’80s.
Before Japan’s stock market crashed
in 1990, corporations snapped up the
likes of Arco Plaza and built groundup structures such as the triangular,
37-story building at 1100 Wilshire
(since converted to condos in 2007).
By contrast, their Korean successors
have moved more methodically—and
with, perhaps, more of an eye toward
the bottom line.
“The Japanese came in and viewed
properties as trophies,” says Jack Kyser of
the nonprofit L.A. County Economic
Development Corporation. “They didn’t
do their due diligence and literally could
not maintain their properties.” Not
so their contemporary counterparts.
“They are investing in different ways,
such as developing condo showrooms
in the fashion district, which is not
glamorous but good business. Japan
came in with corporate money, but
South Korea came with both corporate
and individual money.”
As if to underscore the new
pecking order, a group of KoreanAmerican investors made headlines
last year when they bought downtown’s
Little Tokyo Plaza at Alameda and
Th ird—home of a dense pocket
of sushi spots—with the intent of
theming its tenant base more toward
ORIGINAL RENDERINGS COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE DEVELOPERS; COMBINED ILLUSTRATION BY AGNES CARRERA
THE RADAR | BIZ
Seoul
Patrol!
Forget, for a moment, the bustling bulgogi bastions and
high-dollar hostess clubs. Through ambitious investing,
Koreatown is moving beyond its 24/7 entertainment
economy to become a major real estate powerhouse.
Once merely a circumscribed handful of blocks, its
geographic reach—now stretching from the Miracle
Mile to downtown, with no sign of slowing—has
been expanded by developers from near and far. With
an estimated 200,000 or so Koreans living in L.A.
County, it’s become the largest such enclave outside of
Korea itself. And, more to the point, it’s emerged as an
area bent on self-determination, what with a recently
released survey noting that nearly 1,300 commercial
properties in the diff use district are ethnically owned.
“Private investors have come in to launch massive
development projects that have reshaped [its] image,”
says Dr. Delores Conway, the director of the Casden
Real Estate Economics Forecast, a USC think tank.
Seoul. A Korean grocer has already
replaced the former anchor tenant,
Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa.
“They want to be a part of the
resurgence of the downtown real
estate market,” says Dr. David Lee,
a big-time local Korean investor
who wasn’t involved in either of the
deals, but who, as the chieftain of
K-Town firm Jamison Services, has
arguably amassed a larger portfolio
than anyone else. Lee, formerly a
practicing internist, began buying
up undervalued office buildings in
the depressed market that followed
the 1992 riots—which Koreans
refer to as “sai-i-gu,” translating to
“April 29th”—before moving on to
more prominent sites. Despite the
unrest, he says, “I had confidence
in the expansion and growth of the
Korean community.”
Jamison Services now manages
more than 100 commercial-zoned
buildings (including 80 percent of
the office units in the mid-Wilshire
area) and has also developed the
City Center in K-Town, a shopping
mall completed last year a block
from the former Ambassador
Hotel—all of which makes Lee
one of Southern California’s most
powerful office landlords. “He’s not
a founding father of Koreatown,”
says Jay Chu, president of Secured
Properties, an investment firm in
K-Town’s Equitable Plaza skyscraper
(purchased by Jamison in 1997).
“[But] he took the Asian-American
real estate player to the next level.”
Lee’s growing empire, valued
at $3 billion, stretches across
what could now be called Greater
Koreatown, from a tower along the
Miracle Mile—in which Angeleno’s
offices are located—to the 3
million-sq.-ft. California Market
Center in downtown’s Fashion
District, which he acquired in
2005 for a reported $135 million
and subsequently tapped his
24-year-old daughter, Jaime, to
run. “I like to shop, so it makes
me suited for this job,” Jaime says
of her position as president of the
showroom complex, before adding,
with more seriousness, “I inherited
a killer instinct from my dad.”
Koreatown itself, of course,
has been the true focus of this
indomitable new investor class.
Officially, the neighborhood is bounded to the north
and south by 5th and 12th streets, and to the west
and east by Wilton Place and Hoover. However, over
the past two decades businesses marked by Korean
lettering have surged up to and even beyond Melrose,
Washington, Alvarado and La Brea. (The historic
Glen-Wilson Building at Wilshire and La Brea—long
topped by a neon sign for Japanese beer brand Asahi—
now flaunts, as of 2002, a glowing advertisement for
Seoul-based Samsung, turning the tower into a de facto
gateway for the community.)
As Koreatown gets taller and more foot-trafficfriendly, some pockets are beginning to mirror
the upwardly mobile South Korean capital. The
intersection of Wilshire and Vermont boasts a new
transit-oriented development above the Purple Line
subway, and, around the corner, a midcentury-mod
office tower turned condo project called Summit on
Sixth is said to be the imminent home of Lost actress
Yunjin Kim. The next subway station over, at Western,
is itself topped by a recently completed $165 million
condo tower called Solair. Across the street from the
latter is Courtyard Madang, an in-progress retail and
entertainment complex catering to the Pinkberry
crowd, and a few hundred yards to the east is the posh,
several-year-old Aroma Wilshire Center, a multilevel
sports, spa and shopping facility.
Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of
anthropology and Asian American Studies at UCLA,
believes that K-Town will only expand. “KoreanAmericans are approaching urban space in L.A. like
they would in South Korea. They are attracted to
[that] modernity, with its New York-style high-rises.”
And, in the process, they are taking their place at the
forefront of the prophesized urban ultra-densification
that Mayor Villaraigosa has been heralding as the
city’s destiny since he first took office. Explains the
LAEDC’s Kyser of the group’s newfound pole position:
“Koreans are definitely major real estate players [now].
It’s a fascinating show.” A
DOWNTOWN’S IVANKA? Jaime Lee,
president of the California Market
Center, in downtown’s Fashion District.
August 2009
| Angeleno | 53
latimes.com
latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez13-2009apr13,0,7756363.column
Opinion
As American as Little Bangladesh
Gregory Rodriguez, April 13, 2009
How much is your ethnicity worth? In hard cash. Dollars and cents. How much do you think you
can get for it?
When we talk about race in America, we speak in terms of power and strife. When we bring up
ethnicity, we focus on the gushy stuff -- pride and the sense of belonging that strong cultural
identities create. Think of those quaint, exotics-on-display "isn't diversity great?" stories on
National Public Radio.
But here in the U.S., immigrants have also learned to commodify their ethnic identities, and this
month's controversy in Los Angeles over a proposal to create a Little Bangladesh right smack in
the middle of Koreatown is the latest proof.
When a group of Bangladeshi businessmen filed an application with the city clerk to name the
blocks from 3rd Street to Wilshire between Vermont and Western in honor of their homeland,
Korean activists moved to quash the proposal. The Koreans came across as petty and prideful.
"We don't want to seem like bullies, but this is Koreatown," the chairman of the Korean
American Federation of Los Angeles told one reporter -- but they were also acting completely
rationally and in their self-interest.
Why? Because ethnically designated neighborhoods are as much about marketing and branding,
about telling the world where to buy sushi or kimchi, as they are about where people live, their
actual New World turf or even ethnic pride. Yes, both Korean and Bangladeshi activists will try
to sell you the line that everyone needs a place to be proud of in America, blah, blah, but when
push comes to shove, they'll admit that it's just as much about cash. What could be more
American?
"It's all connected -- pride and business," 53-year-old journalist, mime and yoga instructor Quazi
Huda told me over a cup of tea. "If you pull your ear, your head comes with it."
Huda and his friends believe that a few of those blue city neighborhood signs, bearing the words
"Little Bangladesh," could draw visitors from out of town and around town to the businesses and
restaurants in their little neck of the woods.
Look closely and you'll find that many ethnic "neighborhoods" are more shopping districts than
residential enclaves. There may be a noticeable concentration of, say, Thais living in one part of
the city, or perhaps there was at one time, but that's not strictly necessary to qualify for the blue
sign.
In fact, only 2% of residents of Thai Town are Thai. Little Ethiopia is less than 1% Ethiopian.
Indians make up less than 5% of the part of Artesia known as Little India, though it has never
gotten an official title and sign. And really, how many Greeks do you think actually live in the
Byzantine-Latino Quarter?
Way back in 1980, when Korean businessmen first lobbied the city for a sign on the Hollywood
Freeway designating Koreatown, only 7% of the area's residents were Korean. Today, Koreans
are still not the majority of the population in the area between Melrose and Pico, Hoover to
Crenshaw (more or less).
Of course, the much older Chinatowns of the West Coast, or Little Italy and Greek Town in New
York and Chicago, set the stage. In one of the most studied examples, as far back as the early
20th century, Chinese entrepreneurs self-consciously exchanged restaurants for vice as their
neighborhood calling card.
Today, Koreatown is just a more established version of wanna-be Little Bangladesh. Yes, it may
have served (and for some immigrants still does) as a launching pad where newcomers gain a
toehold in their new country. But a lot of Korean immigrants skip it altogether. More and more,
it's symbolically significant, a place Koreans don't call home but might come to on the weekend,
for food, the language, cultural events. And that official name? It's advertising.
That's what the Bangladeshis want, a way to tell greater L.A., their compatriots and the world,
"Hey, if you want to have Bangladeshi food, come on over to 3rd between Western and
Vermont!" For the city, it's a PR deal too. Consider Chicago, with its tourism slogan: "Travel the
world, in Chicago, one neighborhood at a time."
I'm not saying that we shouldn't give these districts ethnic labels, just that we should see them for
what they are.
Sometime this week, Koreans and Bangladeshis are likely to announce an agreement that both
sides can live with. Little Bangladesh will probably end up being just to the east of what we
consider the heart of Koreatown.
Gift shop owner Anisur Rahman, for one, thinks that this will be a win-win for all involved. "If
we make money, our taxes will go to the city of Los Angeles, the state of California, and to the
U.S.A.," he told me.
How quaint.
grodriguez@latimescolumnists.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Koreatown Tower Puts Emphasis on Retail
by Miller, Daniel
Los Angeles Business Journal • Feb 16, 2009
It has taken the better part of a decade to complete the Solair Wilshire mixed-use tower atop a
Metro Purple Line subway stop on Wilshire Boulevard. But it's been worth the wait.
The $165 million development by Koar Wilshire Western LLC includes 186 condos and 40,000
square feet of retail space, and is viewed as one the most important L.A. County Metropolitan
Transportation Authority transit-oriented projects to date.
Solair is in the heart of Koreatown--a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between Western and
Vermont avenues that teems with every walk of life, from office worker to thousands of Korean
American residents.
They now will be served by a project that includes stores such as Haagen-Dazs, Verizon
Wireless, and a mix of local tenants including a cigar and wine bar, salon and restaurants--all
mere feet from the subway portal. There will be about 20 stores in all, with two vacant retail
spaces left.
Matthew May, president of May Realty Advisors of Sherman Oaks, a leading retail brokerage,
said the project is noteworthy for its heavy emphasis on retail in the middle of a bustling
neighborhood.
"As opposed to just being another project, it's got a very dense urban component. And if you
look at the density within three miles, there is probably half a million people," said May. "I like
the location of it."
The potential of the 90,000-square-foot site was a big attraction for Koar Wilshire, a venture of
Beverly Hills real estate investment partners Bruce Rothman and Laurent Opman of Koar
Institutional Advisors LLC, and Christopher Pak, owner of Koreatown architecture firm Archeon
International Group.
"All of us really envisioned this as one of the tree models of the future of Los Angeles," said
Pak, who designed the project. "Once you come into Solair and live here you really don't have to
go into your car to enjoy an event in downtown or even Hollywood. Here's the perfect example
of where you can live, work and play."
Koar Wilshire first got involved in the project in 2001, when it was given rights to negotiate a
development agreement with the MTA and the L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency after
the agencies called for proposals to develop the corner.
Koar Wilshire leased a portion of the site from the MTA and then bought property from other
landowners to complete the parcel, which takes most of a city block. By 2006, it had assembled
the property and began construction.
The condo tower, and about 30,000 square feet of retail space, is on land that Koar Wilshire
owns; the adjacent outdoor retail plaza and portion of a parking lot are on land owned by the
MTA with the developer holding a long-term lease.
The residences are high-end affairs. Two-and three-bedroom units range from 1,400 square feet
to 1,700 square feet, in addition to 12 penthouses that range from 2,500 square feet to 3,000
square feet. Most units have balconies that offer sweeping views of the city. Two-bedroom units
start at roughly $780,000 and three-bedroom condos start at roughly $1 million. Pak said the
development has attracted mostly Korean Americans and empty nesters, with 70 units in escrow
with nonrefundable deposits.
"In this market, we are very happy with that, given that we started sales in March 2008, at the
beginning of the thick of this recession," he said.
SOLAIR WILSHIRE
Intersection of Western Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, Koreatown
Description: 22-story building with 40,000 square feet of retail space. 18,000-square-foot pool
deck on the seventh floor.
Developer: Koar Wilshire Western LLC
Noteworthy: The building doesn't have a fourth or 13th floor, the former omitted because of an
Asian superstition and the latter omitted because of a Western superstition.
latimes.com
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wilshire11mar11,0,3502197.story
Projects breathe life into Wilshire corridor
The transformation of office buildings into residential addresses fuels a resurgence of
L.A.'s storied boulevard.
By Cara Mia DiMassa, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 11, 2008
The 22nd floor of the new Solair building, a residential, retail and transportation hub at Wilshire
Boulevard and Western Avenue, is still just a concrete platform -- the building's official opening
is months away.
But from that high up, it's easy to see how the building stands at the crossroads of change along
the storied boulevard.
Wilshire Boulevard as it stretches west from downtown was for decades a center of commerce,
with a row of high-rise buildings once occupied by business powerhouses like Union Bank,
Texaco, IBM and Getty Oil.
Those corporate logos disappeared from the tops of the towers long ago. But in the last few
years, Wilshire has been reborn as a stylish residential address -- catering at least in part to
wealthy Koreans who have flocked to the area.
There are more than two dozen residential developments -- adding up to thousands of new
housing units -- either completed or proposed along the boulevard between downtown and the
Miracle Mile district.
Some of the projects are rehabs of shuttered office towers, such as the 1100 and 1010 Wilshire
towers and the Mercury, the old Getty Oil headquarters across the street from Solair. Others are
brand-new projects, sleek glass-and-steel towers like the Solair, where officials gathered Monday
to mark the building's "topping off"--the point in construction when the roof's concrete is poured
and the structure itself fully enclosed.
"We expect this to be a hub, a focal point for the Wilshire corridor," said L.A. County Supervisor
Yvonne B. Burke, of the project, which sits atop a Purple Line station.
But the building boom is meeting with growing concerns from some residents. There is
particular alarm over new projects planned near the corner of La Brea Avenue and Wilshire,
already a major traffic bottleneck, where hundreds of new housing units have been proposed.
"All we are seeing is growth and not the infrastructure," said Jim O'Sullivan, president of the
Miracle Mile Residents Assn.
"All of these projects have what they call ground-floor commercial. What you get is Jamba Juice
or Subway or Starbucks. That flies in the face of what the city calls smart growth," O'Sullivan
said. "Smart growth is supposed to combine living and office spaces [to cut down on commutes].
No one who is moving into these new apartments is going to go down and work in Jamba Juice
or Starbucks."
He and others said the city should encourage more office development on the sites, because those
would bring in jobs where new area residents might work.
But other city leaders strongly support the revitalization. They note that some buildings that are
being rehabbed had long been either empty or in decay -- like the Art Deco building that once
housed Desmond's department store west of LaBrea, and the mid-century Colwell Co. building
north of Vermont.
The stretch of Wilshire was once one of L.A.'s most fashionable districts, home to the
Ambassador Hotel, Bullocks Wilshire department store and close to the mansions of Hancock
Park.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Mid-Wilshire area took on the feel of a city center, with a
canyon of high-rise office buildings between downtown and Hancock Park (where residents
insisted on height limits).
But by the late 1980s, the area was showing signs of decline.
The riots of 1992 -- and a recession in the early '90s -- hit the area hard, as companies vacated
some of the buildings.
The current revival is being sparked in part by investment from Koreans and Korean Americans,
which is fueling a shift in the area toward more upscale housing.
This demographic shift is apparent to George W. Mantor, community sales manager for the
Mercury, a 1963 office tower designed by Claude Beelman. Condos in the building are now
selling for $400,000 to more than $1 million.
"In my profession, we're not supposed to notice," Mantor said, "but interest in this area is
primarily driven by Koreans."
One reason: South Korea has allowed its residents to invest more and more capital abroad, and
Mantor has seen many of those dollars invested in residential housing in Koreatown.
John Kwon, 70, moved to Los Angeles from Chicago with his wife and bought in the Mercury
because, he said, "It was the first high-rise in the Korean community. It's convenient. Everything
is here."
Still, Kwon has set his sights on another Wilshire project. He is eyeing the Solair's construction
project with the eye of a concerned parent, because he recently bought a unit on the building's
top floor.
"It's beautiful up there," he said.
The Wilshire corridor west of downtown is one of the few areas in the city -- along with
downtown and Hollywood--that is exempt from a city law passed in 1986 aimed at stopping
high-rise towers that had made certain parts of Westwood and the Valley resemble urban
canyons.
The law cut in half the allowable size of future high-rises in about 70% of the city, but allowed a
higher floor-to-area ratio for the exempt areas.
Christopher Pak, one of the partners in the Solair project, said the change "is driven by the sheer
nature of the city evolving. It's becoming more metropolitan than suburban."
In addition, Wilshire is seen as one of the city's few transportation corridors, with bus lines and
rail stations helping to whisk residents from there to other parts of the city.
"Wilshire Boulevard is one of the great streets for mixed use," said development consultant Kate
Bartolo. "With its wide boulevard streets, light rail and bus service, Wilshire is an ideal corridor
to creatively mix uses that result in both job creation and housing. Focusing growth on streets
built to accommodate it can also better preserve residential neighborhoods."
Roger Moliere, chief of the MTA's Real Property and Development division, said the transit
agency has partnered in two residential projects above subway stations along Wilshire -- the
Solair and the rental-retail project at Wilshire and Vermont, jointly developed by Urban Partners
and MacFarlane Partners.
The idea, Moliere, said, is to "bring attention to using public transportation." But he added that
the MTA is fussy about what gets built there: "We try to get a project that fits in with what the
area needs. We don't just plop something down."
Critics, however, have questioned whether building housing near transportation lines gets
motorists out of their cars. For example, the subway under the Solair does not make the link to
the Westside, a key L.A. destination.
Officials want to extend the subway west to Santa Monica, but it remains unclear how they can
afford the $6-billion cost.
Nonetheless, some city leaders and residents see progress on the boulevard. Many said they lived
through years of crime and neglect -- graffiti on buildings, little pedestrian life -- and are
encouraged that some of the old office buildings are being reused.
Wilshire Boulevard, especially on the Miracle Mile, has "one of the greatest collection of Art
Deco buildings in this city, or in any city," said Ken Bernstein, manager of the city planning
department's Office of Historic Resources. "We are seeing renewed interest in those buildings."
Bernstein pointed to the American Cement Co. tower near MacArthur Park, a landmark of midcentury architecture that was recently rehabbed into live-work spaces.
Standing on the pool deck atop the Mercury, Brian Watson, the building's assistant manager,
swept his hand over the vista, pointing out the FaithDome in South Los Angeles, the Hollywood
sign and other highlights.
Actor Scott Baio was married next to the pool recently, he said, and Rich & Skinny Jeans held a
party there.
"High-rises are popping up everywhere," Watson said. "The whole mantra of L.A., from here to
downtown is live, work and play."
cara.dimassa@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times