Cultural Center fight devolved to this
All signs in the Chinese Cultural Center conflict indicate there will be no negotiated peace.
Not that the odds for compromise were good in the first place, given the polar-opposite positions of the principals:
True North Companies, a private equity firm that purchased the property in June through 668 North, a subsidiary, wanted to get rid of the classical Chinese roof tiles and decorative elements to transform the center into a corporate headquarters, while
A coalition of the Chinese community wanted to retain the outside aesthetics of a structure it deems to be architecturally and culturally significant. Any changes, the community argues, would destroy the harmony and integrity of the whole.
In other words, never the twain shall meet.
Negotiations and offers to purchase (never serious) gave way to rallies and pleas before the Phoenix City Council. Which devolved into protests and lawsuits.
Still, the contention of late last year and early this year is nothing compared to the mini-drama that played out recently with one of the center’s tenants, Beijing Garden.
The operator of the restaurant opted to join the Cultural Center fight by filing a lawsuit over remodeling changes around the property — and did so even though the terms of an extended lease were in jeopardy. (668 North maintains Beijing Garden declined an offer to extend the lease by dropping the suit; Beijing Garden questioned the sincerity, citing a grocery market that went to a month-to-month lease and nonetheless got the boot.).
Beijing Garden lost on its gambit. But instead of vacating, the operator and supporters of the preservation movement occupied the restaurant aroundthe-clock to prevent eviction. 668 North representatives responded with permitted "self-help" steps, including having the electricity turned off and the account switched out.
Unwitting customers to Beijing Gardens experienced disrupted service, in part because the kitchen exhaust fan on the roof was removed as part of the remodeling, making cooking a potential hazard. At one point, Phoenix Fire units were called about concerns the conditions posed to customers (no emergency was found, however.).
Things got so out of hand that a superior court judge overseeing the case offered his availability for emergency hearings until proceedings for eviction could be held.
That same judge did admonish 668 North reps to refrain from "self-help" measures that could put the public safety – that of restaurant customers – at
risk and which could be interpreted as “criminally wrong.”
The episode became largely moot when the Beijing Gardens proprietor lost all his challenges and got evicted. But it stoked higher levels disbelief and anger in parts of the Chinese community.
Members of the Arizona Chinese Restaurant Association donated a sum to help the Beijing Gardens owner, and some owners wonder whether they could face a similar plight if they run afoul of a hostile landlord.
Beijing Gardens became the focal point of several videos that serve to update the continuing fight to preserve the Chinese Cultural Center, and was featured in a couple of newspaper ads attacking True North and its executive David Tedesco.
Thomas Simon, the spokesman for the Chinese coalition, spoke this week of efforts underway to expand the advertising campaign to several West Coast cities with big populations of Asian Americans. The campaign includes a call to boycott three companies associated with Tedesco and 668 North's parent, True North.
The actions against Beijing Gardens are a big lament.
There was early indication that 668 North would prevail in the lawsuit, meaning eviction was inevitable. And the messy way things turned out is being used as ammo to undermine the goodwill Tedesco had engendered early on, when he offered to preserve the garden and some architectural elements fronting 44th Street.
More critically, Beijing Gardens and the contractual terms involving it were only incidental to the larger fight over the Chinese Cultural Center, which is ostensibly about property rights.
Even the Chinese community came around to that point. (It initially sought to save the center through political intervention and historic preservation, then discovered that there simply was no way to make that happen.)
The resolution that matters most lies with the Arizona Court of Appeals, which will determine whether the proprietor of Szechuan Palace, who owns 5 of the 102 units that make up the Chinese Cultural Center, has a say in the fate of the roof and common-area elements under a special clause in the CC&Rs.
A ruling could take weeks. It remains to be seen whether the period leading up to it will be drama-free.