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Originally Posted by Barrelfish
I think this isn't quite right. The Chinese name better translates to Grand Harbor Center.
The first two characters of the name are 宏港 (Hóng gǎng in Mandarin). Gǎng is harbor. Hóng is great or grand.
The Chinese name for Hong Kong is 香港 (xiāng gǎng in Mandarin), which translates to "Fragrant harbor". It's confusing because in Cantonese, that first character is pronounced more like hóng. (At least I think so. I know a bit of mandarin but almost no cantonese).
Either way, thanks for keeping us in the loop on this one!
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Yeah, you're right. My wife corrected me too
It's Hong Gang - I still have more Mandarin to learn..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomguy34
This is great to hear! I'm surprised residential is being planned when the underlying zoning is still a PMD
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So what's interesting is that the big open space across from Jefferson Square has an application to return zoning back to what it was before. The owner of C21 mentioned in a video they were just going to make the entire thing parking, so maybe that's consistent with the new zoning application. However, another video said they'd be building new stuff there, so who knows. Maybe both developments have some of the same investors working together. Either way, it's positive to see these things happen in this area.
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Originally Posted by ORD2010
Are they still planning for the Chinese superstore (sounded like an ikea type store?) in the main building? as well as the large dim sum restaurant? I remember being very excited for that part of the concept.
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To be honest, I have no idea. It'll be interesting to see because this is only a 5 minute walk to Jefferson Square. Both of these places have 300K sq ft of retail space, mainly targeted towards Asian owned businesses. By comparison, Pacific Mall in Markham, ON (Toronto) has 270K sq ft afaik. That's considered a well known place and each of these places in Chicago are larger individually. jefferson Square already has a few restaurants/eateries open there (at least 2 Chinese places and a sushi place) with more coming. The investors/owners of Jefferson Square are actually from mainland China so it will be interesting to see which retail stores from China they are able to get to open there. Up until now, most of the retail stores in Chinatown Chicago are very local and I'd say that's true in many cities really. In the last few years, food chains from China have started to open in Chicago as well as other US cities (NYC, LA, Boston, Seattle, DC, etc). I'll be interested to see if any of the retail brands from there could follow. It wouldn't necessarily surprise me if the home goods store still opened there. I think I heard that 88 Marketplace sells some home goods too. There is an importer in Chicago (Rongsheng) located in Archer Heights who moved from Flushing NYC a few years ago. Would be interesting to see some actual retailers there. I have gotten clothes in China itself and at least of some brands it's definitely true that the quality there is better than some of what is imported normally in America.
I think the banquet restaurant mentioned would definitely have dim sum during normal type of day hours. My guess is that they would be putting in the other NYC Chinese restaurants there too but no idea. I bet if you contacted C21 real estate (HMC Realty) they could tell you (
http://hmcrealty.com).
Also don't forget that 3-5 minute walk from 465 W Cermak is a new retail mall from the same developer, and I know at least one food place (Monkey King Jianbing) recently opened there. There's 40 retail stalls there plus all this new retail space from those 2 malls within 5-10 minutes walk, and plans to build even more retail. Curious to see if there's about to be a bunch of Chinese businesses opening in Chicago from mainland itself in these places, or if they'll have trouble leasing out all the space. Will be interesting to see..