Citizens Protest Chinatown Development

Tony Tsai, of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown, riles up a crowd infront of East Bank in protest of rezoning of the area. (Cliff Jia/The Epoch Times)

Tony Tsai

NEW YORK— A torrential downpour, a megaphone, and the umbrellas of protesting citizens crowded the front of East Bank in Chinatown. Protesters gathered outside of East Bank on Wednesday to protest the city’s rezoning plan. The Department of City Planning (DCP) has focused much of its attention on the East Village, excluding Chinatown and the Lower East Side, according to the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side’s Web site.

Tony Tsai, a member of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, got the crowd chanting, “Alex Chu shame on you! East Bank shame on you!”

Alexander Chu is Chinatown’s biggest banker and landlord, and is said to be moving to gentrify the low-income community to create luxury developments.

Malcolm Lam, a resident of Chinatown, expressed his feelings about the plan at a rezoning hearing held in 2008, “I grew up in Chinatown, my parents, my grandmother, myself. We worked in Chinatown, it is a working class community that I love, and I am angered that Bloomberg’s DCP is treating it like a bastard child.”

Bloomberg’s plan says it will include affordable housing, but requires families to earn $60,000 plus to qualify.
The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side’s site states that the plan will actually create a wall of luxury high-rises around Chinatown and the Lower East Side, while dividing both communities in half.