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Struggling to hold on in post-9/11 Chinatown

BY FARNOOSH TORABI | SPECIAL TO amNEWYORK

January 30, 2006

Since 9/11, Chinatown economy has been struggling to survive. Many businesses have closed, others are trying to hang on.

The five-story tenement building on the corner of Mott and Mosco streets has been in Jan Lee's family ever since Lee's grandfather emigrated from Toi San, China, in 1890. The family has always used the upstairs area as its home and the downstairs space as a storefront. But these days, the future of the store is uncertain.

The first floor has gone through several small-business incarnations, from a laundromat to a shoe shop to a dry-goods store. Since 1992, it has been home to Sinotique, Lee's antique home-furnishings store.

At first, the antique shop seemed an odd choice for such a gritty neighborhood.

"I would get comments like, 'Your store is too nice for Chinatown,'" Lee, 40, recalled. "And I took offense to that because I was from Chinatown. But I believe in the adage 'If you build it, they will come.'"

And they did. For the first 10 years, people from the tri-state area poured into Sinotique to browse its collection of what Lee calls "very rustic, very raw folk pieces from all over the world."

Then came 9/11, which struck a crippling blow to Chinatown's economy.

Business at Sinotique plummeted nearly 70% the first year after the attack, Lee said. More than four years later, the shop is still struggling to bounce back.

"Our Monday-through-Friday traffic is at least 50% less because of the loss of the World Trade Center," Lee said.

For customers, just getting to Chinatown can be a hassle. Because the neighborhood is close to NYPD headquarters, many roads have been blocked off, intensifying traffic on surrounding roads and leaving fewer places to park.

"We haven't been able to get completely back on our feet," said John Wang, president of the Asian American Business Development Center. Chinatown's garment industry, Wang said, has lost roughly 500 garment factories and, as a result, 30,000 jobs.

By Lee's count, 29 businesses on Mott Street between Worth and Canal have closed in the past four years.

At 19 Mott Street, Sinotique has hung on. But it has had to adjust.

The business relies less on the storefront location and more on a 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

The space, which before 9/11 mostly stored imported goods, now houses Sinotique's wholesale business, showcasing a selection of rare furnishings for other antique retailers.

Lee, who has a background in fine arts, is also replacing some of the lost revenue from the Mott Street store by contracting more work as an interior designer for local businesses.

He's made changes within the store, too. Before 9/11, Sinotique displayed many bulky, heavy items. Today, much of the store consists of smaller pieces. "The people who finally do make it here, want to be able to carry something home," Lee said.

Lee says he could give up on the Mott Street location and live well off his wholesale and design-consulting businesses.

But his connection to the store runs beyond the four walls of Sinotique. It spreads throughout Chinatown -- from the homes of immigrant neighbors who used to baby-sit him to the mom-and-pop businesses like the May-May Gourmet Bakery, where Lee and his siblings used to devour dim sum.

For Lee, giving up on the store would mean giving up on his roots. It would mean letting Chinatown turn into what he calls a "retail boring" environment, a place where eyeglasses stores and banks buy out shops you can't find anywhere else.

"I'm trying to preserve the character of Chinatown," Lee said. "And I have great faith."

Farnoosh Torabi is the business producer at NY1 News. If you know a small business with an interesting story, please e-mail her at AMSmallBusiness@gmail.com.