The old-style banquet hall is coming back to Chinatown’s New Asia restaurant that is now a grocery store, along with 175 units of affordable housing on top, thanks to a $33.5 million state grant that Mayor Lurie says just came through.
It’s been eight full years since the City of San Francisco bought the land on which Chinatown’s New Asia restaurant sits (772 Pacific Avenue) with plans to build an affordable housing complex for seniors on top of the restaurant and banquet hall. Though not much has happened with that plan since. But plenty has happened to the restaurant itself, which transitioned into a grocery store during the pandemic, when the banquet hall model became infeasible.
We heard some rumblings right before Chinese New Year weekend 2024 that the affordable housing plan was back on. It was not back on for long, though, as this past August, the Chronicle reported that the state funding to help build the project had fallen through.
Meanwhile, the interior of the New Asia remains a grocery store at a time when restaurants are perfectly viable again, with the puzzling sight of chandeliers and a stage amongst the racks of produce and food.
But Mayor Daniel Lurie held a Wednesday morning press conference to announce that the affordable housing complex that was going to be built above the building is back on track, with its funding restored.
“Today we are excited to announce that the new Asia Project is moving forward,” Lurie said at this morning's announcement. “We are ready to build 175 new homes for seniors, and I’m proud to say that every single unit will be 100% affordable.”
And Lurie says the old banquet hall is finally coming back, too. “In the next chapter of this site, the project brings the banquet hall back to life on the ground floor while providing affordable housing for our seniors above it.”
Lurie’s speech was long on promises, though short on details of just how they got the money that the state had yanked. But Chinatown Community Development Center executive director Malcolm Yeung, whose organization will be managing the project built on city land, explained that a $33.5 million grant just came through this week.
“The reason why it will be moving forward is that we were just notified on Monday morning that funding that we thought was in jeopardy from the state of California has now been officially awarded to the New Asia Project,” Yeung told the audience.
He also teased another aspect to the project that has still not been announced. “This isn’t just going to be a banquet hall,” Yeung said. “We will unveil that plan hopefully in the coming months, we’re not quite ready to get into the details.”
The City of San Francisco had already pledged an additional $45 million to make the project happen, and the whole financing is still contingent on some sort of tax credits whose details are still being worked out. Yeung predicted that “We’ll be able to get those tax credits and break ground in early 2027.”
While that plan says they'll break ground on the project in 2027, a press release from Lurie’s office says the full affordable housing complex and new banquet hall’s openings are “anticipated in 2029.”
Image: Kevin Y via Yelp
