Little Tokyo Connected!

Forbes and the Associated Press featured Little Tokyo in a story over the weekend:

The last time Little Tokyo tried getting back to its Japanese roots, it was in the early 1980s with the Japanese Village Plaza, a warren of sweets shops, tea stands and trinket stores under sloping glazed-tile roofs.

Now, on the eve of the area's most ambitious development project in decades, the historically Japanese enclave has something different in mind: trendy boutiques and stylish apartments enclosed in sleek mid-rise towers.

The article talks about the Nikkei Center in the context of the recent real estate developments and how these changes are impacting the community, and how Little Tokyo is gettin' its groove back.

But hipness fades, and the next year or so is going to be critical to crafting a vision of the community that'll endure and capture and reflect the spirit of Little Tokyo.

The fact that our small neighborhood is garnering so much attention I think is testament to some of the amazing and dramatic shifts taking place here, and how a community tries to pull together to address some of the challenges to identity, culture and history. This is a really exciting and important time for all of us to be involved in Little Tokyo's future.