How do you define Chinatown?

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Saturday, Nov. 19, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

Is it the pagodas? Or what's under them? Does a McDonald's with a pagoda "maintain the cultural heritage of Chinatown"?

Those and other questions will be dealt with in a series of meetings beginning today over a proposed ordinance that would define where Chinatown begins and ends and what it should look like.

If the ordinance is approved by the Clark County Commission early next year, it would be the first time that Las Vegas Valley development codes included cultural criteria, according to Daniel Sinagra, senior planner in the Clark County Department of Comprehensive Planning.

That makes the whole enterprise "quite a sensitive issue," he said.

Although materials -- in English, Spanish and Chinese -- sent to area residents and businesses about today's meeting speak of "protect(ing) the Asian character of the Chinatown area," Sinagra said he does not want the ordinance to be too specific about what that means.

The meeting to consider what would be called a "Chinatown Design Overlay District" is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at 4255 Spring Mountain Road, Suite C-200.

"Chinatown doesn't embrace a particular culture per se," said Sinagra, a landscape architect by trade who said his Argentinean heritage makes him sensitive to differences between cultures.

"There's China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and the whole gamut. (So) we didn't want to embrace a particular cultural design."

Rod Allison, planning manager with the department, said the original idea for an ordinance to guide future development in Chinatown came from some of its own businesses.

Business owners first raised the idea, Allison said, at public meetings held in recent months to update planning documents for the Winchester/ Paradise area -- which includes Chinatown.

"Folks came to us and said they were interested in getting something in the plan about promoting Chinatown ... (and) design standards with an Oriental theme," he said.

Alan Chen, public relations director for Chinatown Plaza and the Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce of Nevada, said it is important for any ordinance to be as open-ended as possible.

"It would have to be very general -- there's no way to come out with, 'This should be that color,' " he said.

That thought prompted him to launch into a discursive analysis of the roofs in the Chinatown Plaza that his office oversees -- where what is now known as Chinatown began a decade ago -- and the roofs in a newer plaza directly east along Spring Mountain Road.

"Our roofs are designed after emperors' roofs in Beijing, where different colors symbolize different rankings," he said. The roofs farther down the road, he explained, "suggest Southeast Asia, like a temple."

The point, Chen said, was that the other, newer mall had different cultural underpinnings in its design. But to the average person, "people who don't know ... see us as the same," he said.

The malls are run by different people, with different stores and restaurants, from different countries -- the newer mall even has U.S. chains like Starbucks -- and with different standards.

So if an ordinance is to make future buildings in the area look similar or the same, should it also address other issues, such as what types of businesses and how they are run?

Kimberly Chen, leasing representative at the Center at Spring Mountain -- the newer mall east of Chinatown Plaza -- said it would be important "to maintain an Asian theme" in the area's future. But she was hard-pressed to define exactly what that meant.

Sinagra said another issue to keep in mind during public meetings planned over the next four months involves several condominium towers on the drawing board for the area, projects backed by Asian investors also interested in the Chinatown concept.

He said future plans should take into account ways to encourage pedestrian traffic and public transportation between the new residential towers, Chinatown stores and restaurants and the nearby Strip.

The issues and positions to be considered in the coming months are daunting, Sinagra said.

"How to reconcile it all -- that's the challenge," he said.

Or as Chen put it: "We are talking about trying to meld together business, politics and culture -- and people with many different kinds of views."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.