“Prospective buyer wants to help save Chinatown’s historic May Wah Hotel”

November 21, 2016 – CBC News

The May Wah Hotel is a City of Vancouver-designated heritage building that houses more than 100 low-income tenants.

Chinatown’s historic May Wah Hotel may be saved after all.

A prospective buyer has stepped up to try and purchase the heritage building with the intention of preserving its low-income housing units.

The Vancouver Chinatown Foundation says it is in serious talks with the Shon Yee Benevolent Association, the hotel’s owner, to purchase the building on East Pender Street.

“The Atkin Solution for Chinatown: A Cultural Landscape”

November 21, 2016 – Price Tags

Price Tags asked historian and heritage advocate John Atkin how he would rezone Chinatown.  Here’s his solution:

A Cultural Landscape Not a Development Area

Chinatown is both a nationally recognized historic district spanning Pender to Gore with its distinctive and unique Society buildings, and it is the surrounding business district which maintains the area’s traditional retail of bbq meats, fruits, vegetables, and live fish. Together they form a cultural landscape that ‘provides the vitality and living colour that gives Chinatown its distinctive character.’

“Plan for giant buildings in Chinatown comes under fire”

November 18, 2016 – Vancouver Sun

For sale sign in the 700-block of Vancouver’s Chinatown

Chinatown has traditionally been a low-rise neighbourhood of small stores on 25-foot lots.

But heritage activists fear much of the historic neighbourhood will be demolished if a new city proposal to allow buildings up to 200 feet wide goes through.

“When you’re talking 200-foot frontages, that’s eight lots, that blows out half the block,” said civic historian John Atkin.

“That’s actually greater frontages than what’s allowed in the Downtown South area. Pender Street seems to be respected, but everything outside of Pender seems to be bulldozer bait.”

“‘De Blasio must go!’ Group demands mayor resign for rezoning snub”

November 3, 2016 – The Villager

BY KARI LINDBERG | With passionate chants of “Racism No More,” “New York City Not For Sale” and “De Blasio, Step Down,” members the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side kicked off their protest outside City Hall last Wednesday.

Around 100 protestors, mainly older Chinese and Latinos, came out alongside activists, wearing signs in English, Spanish and Chinese saying “De Blasio, Step Down” and “Stop Ethnic Racism.” They called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to leave office for failing to protect Asian, African-American and Latino communities from being displaced.

“Awaiting a City Plan, LIC Groups Sketch Out Red Lines Around Rezoning”

Oct 19, 2016 – Citylimits

Coalition member Dr. Sharon Cadiz said residents can see recent examples of how community action can reshape development decisions in Maspeth and at LIC’s own Phipps Houses site.

Nearly 300 people packed the Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement House in Long Island City on Monday night to discuss the de Blasio administration’s plan to rezone the area.

Hosted by the Justice for All Coalition, an alliance supported by Faith in New York and consisting of local labor, church, and public housing tenant groups, the forum sought to inform local residents about the stakes of a potential rezoning and share the coalition’s platform of demands for future equitable development.