Little Tokyo Connected!

Last Sunday's LA Times ran a story on the City's recommendation of the Nikkei Center team as the developer of the Mangrove site. Teresa Watanabe of the Times does a nice job of describing the current neighborhood context within which this competition took place and why so many Little Tokyo stakeholders are thrilled with the selection:

As a multicultural wave of new investors and residents begins to reshape Little Tokyo, many community leaders are hailing a Los Angeles city recommendation to sell the last large undeveloped land parcel in the area to a development team led by Japanese Americans.

The competition for the land at 1st and Alameda streets is seen as a critical test of the Japanese American community's ability to strongly influence the future development of its cultural core, the neighborhood its immigrant pioneers first settled a century ago....