About 3,000 Chinese were living there by the 1930s, when the whole neighborhood was uprooted to make way for construction of Union Station on Alameda Street. A group of families and merchants banded together as the Los Angeles Chinatown Corp. to create a "new Chinatown" to the north on Broadway.

Soo Hoo is the nephew of Chinatown founder [Peter Soo Hoo]. (He is also the uncle of the late Los Angeles Police Officer Arthur Soo Hoo, who with partner William Wong, was killed in Chinatown in 1983 by a hit-and-run driver. A suspect in that case has been arrested after two decades on the run, police announced Monday.)

"I think it's going to bring a lot of people into Chinatown. They can come to shop without having to worry about parking. People can get off the Gold Line and have a Chinese dinner before taking a bus up to Dodger Stadium," said Soo Hoo, who is current president of the Los Angeles Chinatown Corp.