Saving Chinese Cultural Center ... wait, was there one?

As eleventh-hour campaigns go, the effort to save the Chinese Cultural Center in east Phoenix boasts a bit of vigor. Supporters have retained high-powered attorneys, as well as the help of a former mayor. It has gotten hundreds of people to rally at the center on successive weekends, circulated petitions that have drawn thousands of signatures and comments, and generated news coverage overseas.

On Tuesday, the pressure reaches the Phoenix City Council, which will weigh a longshot request by the group for a public hearing and action to preserve the structure.

If only there was more to fight for — and to fight with.

The city is asked, in essence, to forbid the new property owner from changing the look of the structure as he sees fit. A tall order, that.

The movement to save the Chinese Cultural Center certainly has a sympathetic cause. Phoenix’s true Chinatown, where grocers, traders and restaurants thrived at the early part of the 20th century, has long been razed and largely forgotten.

The Chinese Cultural Center, erected with tens of milllions of dollars in 1997, was envisioned to be a modern-day hub for Chinese and Chinese Americans.

Its most striking features are also at the heart of the preservation debate: Architectural designs and elements that are replicas of classical Chinese pavilions and gardens. Hand-carvings of wood that was more than 50 years old; tiles handmade of material that’s no longer permitted to be removed from the Chinese province from where it was sourced; stonework and paint colors that mimic traditions stretching millennia.

Phoenix’s ordinance opens the door for a historic designation if a site is 50 years old or is exceptionally important. It’s difficult to imagine a 20-somethingyears-old structure, with replicas of cultural significance, as qualifying — and that is if the mayor and council votes to initiate such a determination by its historic-preservation officer.

What is more clear-cut is the Chinese Cultural Center has long been that in name only.

In its heyday, cultural events such as Chinese Week and the Autumn Moon festival drew thousands to the site on 44th Street just south of Loop 202. There was a 99 Ranch market with fresh Chinese produce and fish, a dim sum restaurant, gift shops, a Chinese bank, and even a Chinese herbal medicine shop.

But even then, there was no cultural or senior center as a magnet, no museum or exhibition space showcasing the history or significance of the Chinese in Phoenix, no dedicated space for community meetings.

And over time, the Chinese diaspora — and other Asian ethnicities — migrated in larger numbers to the East Valley. The festivals moved elsewhere, the Asian-themed businesses fled, with nothing to replace them.

There are more folks in any typical week shopping, eating and commiserating at Mekong Plaza in Mesa or farther south in retail centers at the intersection of Dobson and Chandler. The Chinese Cultural Center has not been exceptionally important for a long time, if ever.

That is not to say that the forces behind the preservation movement are without a basis, or even a way out.

True North Companies, an Arizona private-equity firm behind the purchase, and its CEO David Tedesco have agreed to preserve the garden and to provide a meeting space for the ChineseAmerican community. But he has plans to modernize the structure and to use it as a corporate headquarters for True North.

The Chinese community could accept the compromise, or seek to compensate Tedesco to preserve more of the architectural features fronting 44th Street as an easement. Or it can negotiate with Tedesco and outright buy the property.

Supporters might still prevail through a nastier, drawn-out legal or political process. The bigger question, though, would be how to forge and maintain a cultural center that never was.