How did Flushing main street and area surrounding turn into 99% Chinese/Taiwanese (Union: real estate, hotels)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Before the businesses can move in, the people have to move in. Slowly the chinese moved into the area, most likely still commuting to old chinatown in Manhattan. Then some smart chinese business persons brought up more commercial real estate, and residential real estate and began marketing to the Chinese. This was easy for them to do because at the time everyone was moving to the suburbs, so Flushing RE was getting cheap, and stores were going out of business.
I'm Chinese myself so this is not a racist post. I'm just wondering how did it go from non-chinese to 99% chinese.
anyone know?
thanks
Same as parts of Bayridge in Brooklyn and elsewhere in NYC, whites (Italians, Irish, etc...) fled as the area began to "tip", and once that process was well underway the remaining followed.
Flushing was actually quite a Jewish area. The baby boomer kids who graduated college in the 1970's and 1980's moved to the suburbs. Their parents, many of whom owned businesses on Main Street, aged out. As a prior poster stated, real estate was very cheap at this time. Hard to believe, but Main Street had really gone downhill.
So there was an opportunity for another ethnic group to move in and the Chinese took it. And because you could take the #7 train from Manhattan's Chinatown to Grand Central, and then the #7 line to Flushing, it made the transition easy.
Alot of Main St between Northern Blvd and Elder Ave got bought up by Chinese interests but the entire surrounding area is not 99% Chinese. Northern Blvd directly to the east is mostly Korean businesses, and to the west is for all intents and purposes entirely Latino all the way to Woodside.
Flushing used to be Irish, Italian, Jewish - Koreans starting coming in the 60s, Chinese later in the 80s or 90s. If you go down Main St in the Jewel Ave area you'll find a huge Jewish community almost exclusively Jewish businesses - closed on Sat of course.
As far as Main St is concerned, my guess is that after Koreans started moving in, followed a few decades later by Chinese, the last 20 years have seen the Chinese economy become a major player on the world stage, and with a thriving Chinese community in Flushing and CHEAP real estate compared to other parts of the city Chinese interests saw an opportunity and started building bigger buildings - malls, hotels, apt complexes, all geared towards that established community - non-union labor of course.
If LaGuardia wasn't so close that zoning doesn't allow it you better believe Flushing would be another Shanghai right now with crazy ass skyscrapers.
Alot of Main St between Northern Blvd and Elder Ave got bought up by Chinese interests but the entire surrounding area is not 99% Chinese. Northern Blvd directly to the east is mostly Korean businesses, and to the west is for all intents and purposes entirely Latino all the way to Woodside.
Flushing used to be Irish, Italian, Jewish - Koreans starting coming in the 60s, Chinese later in the 80s or 90s. If you go down Main St in the Jewel Ave area you'll find a huge Jewish community almost exclusively Jewish businesses - closed on Sat of course.
As far as Main St is concerned, my guess is that after Koreans started moving in, followed a few decades later by Chinese, the last 20 years have seen the Chinese economy become a major player on the world stage, and with a thriving Chinese community in Flushing and CHEAP real estate compared to other parts of the city Chinese interests saw an opportunity and started building bigger buildings - malls, hotels, apt complexes, all geared towards that established community - non-union labor of course.
If LaGuardia wasn't so close that zoning doesn't allow it you better believe Flushing would be another Shanghai right now with crazy ass skyscrapers.
I am pretty sure the koreans moved in much after the chinese. No one ever heard of a korean neighborhood until the late 90s, and even then still speculative.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
