Renewed efforts to build a gateway to Chinatown in both Manhattan and Brooklyn are gaining momentum, reports the NY Times.
The city’s Chinatowns are one of the few in the country without one.
“It’s like the totem pole for Native Americans: It’s self-identity,” said WellingtonChen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation. “It’s fundamentally about self-respect of a community that has been isolated.”
Chen has sought designs from students at Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation and has made the securing of funding for the project the top priority of his Local Development Corporation.
He sees it as sort of a defense against the growing gentrification of Manhattan’s Chinatown and the corresponding decline in the Chinese American population there.
In Brooklyn, a site has already been selected, plans have been submitted to the city and fundraising has already begun.
You can read about the proposed design in the NY Times.
