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Cleaning supplies sit in the window of Suehiro Cafe, which was evicted from Little Tokyo in January.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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Topline:
In Little Tokyo, the eviction of an iconic Japanese restaurant has galvanized a neighborhood battle against gentrification. All eyes have been on what's coming in next. The landlord says it'll be another restaurant also serving Asian cuisine.
The backstory: Hundreds had petitioned and rallied against the eviction of the former Suehiro Cafe. Activists threatened landlord Tony Sperl with a boycott if he pursued a a business out of character with the neighborhood.
Rumored replacements: Among the businesses that neighborhood leaders feared would go into Suehiro's old space was a marijuana dispensary. Sperl says several years ago he had considered putting a dispensary in his two-story building on 1st Street, but no longer. He says stories have been fabricated about him and his business plans.
What's next: Sperl says he always intended to replace Suehiro with another restaurant and that several offers are on the table. He hopes to finalize a lease in the coming weeks. Suehiro, meanwhile, has opened a new location downtown.
When he made the move last year to evict a beloved Little Tokyo restaurant, landlord Tony Sperl went from relative obscurity to Public Enemy No.1 with neighborhood activists.
Hundreds of people petitioned or rallied against the displacement of Suehiro Cafe, which has been dishing up Japanese comfort food from its 1st Street perch for decades.
Community leaders threatened Sperl with a boycott of any new tenant that could harm a historic community already under gentrification pressures, and poised to see major future development.
Worrying them was a 2018 business filing with the state that listed Sperl as one of several managers for a marijuana dispensary to be located on the second floor of his building, above Suehiro.
The former dining space for Suehiro Cafe.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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The former Suehiro kitchen.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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Sperl said he had considered the “Tokyo Greens” idea pitched to him by a former tenant, but the proposal has been dead for several years.
“There is not a dispensary opening — and that's the truth, OK?” Sperl said.
Rather, Sperl says he’s on the cusp of entering into a lease with another Asian restaurant, more than three months after Suehiro was forced to leave.
Sperl said two different groups have leases in hand, noting that one of them already owns a restaurant in Little Tokyo.
Sperl, whose family has owned the building since 1882, said there are three backup offers from other groups on the table as well.
Which begs the question: If Sperl wanted a restaurant as a tenant, why not just keep Suehiro?
Sperl won’t say, his only response being: “Why don’t you ask him?”
The backstory
The “him” in question is Suehiro’s owner, Kenji Suzuki. It was his mother and aunt who founded the restaurant in 1972 at its first location on 2nd Street before relocating to 1st Street in the mid-1980s.
More than a decade ago, the restaurant’s lease with Sperl expired. Suzuki had previously told LAist that Sperl would not give him a new lease without a $100,000 negotiation fee.
The restaurateur continued to pay month-to-month and said he absorbed a rent hike to $10,000. Then Sperl stopped cashing the rent checks and last spring, started to pursue eviction, Suzuki said.
Passersby look at signs posted on the window of the former Suehiro Cafe.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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The signs posted on a window outside the former Suehiro Cafe read "Fake News. No Dispensary. No Marijuana. Someone Lied?"
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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In the months that elapsed while the eviction was pending, community activists with the Little Tokyo Against Gentrification coalition mobilized to save the restaurant, part of a dying breed of legacy businesses they said had been felled by the pandemic, rising rents and the lack of successors to aging proprietors.
But the coalition took satisfaction in knowing that their protests had an impact. Last month, Monkawa received a message from Sperl promising there’d be “no dispensary, strip club, McDonald’s or franchise.”
“We were able to put up a strong picket line and embarrass Tony Sperl into agreeing to no inappropriate business,” Monkawa said.
David Ikegami, president of the Little Tokyo Business Association, said he was pleased to hear that a new restaurant was going into the former Suehiro location.
Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts, another legacy business a few doors down from the former Suehiro Cafe, announced it was closing last December.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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“We are Little Tokyo and it'd be nice if it's a Japanese restaurant but if it's not, that's OK, too,” said Ikegami, noting that everything from pizza joints to Chinese restaurants have fared well in the neighborhood.
Suzuki, who has since opened a new location downtown on Main Street, could not be reached comment by deadline. But his lawyer Clifford Jung said they wished nothing but the best for the new restaurant.
“I hope that they'll be an asset to the Little Tokyo community like Suehiro was,” Jung said.
Sperl shared a desire to move forward with a new tenant but also expressed bitterness over protests that vilified him. Some activists branded him as a gentrifier, and also attacked him for his time working as a police officer when 41 years ago, he shot dead a young boy after mistaking his toy for a gun.
Asked to comment on his law enforcement past, Sperl said he wasn’t “interested in that.” But he railed against the perception he was for gentrification, noting that he opposes development projects on the Westside and Little Tokyo that he said would negatively affect Japanese American communities in those neighborhoods.
He also disputed the claim that he wanted Little Tokyo to resemble Melrose.
“What?” Sperl snapped. “Was I like standing in the middle of 1st Street screaming, ‘I'm turning this place into Melrose?’ It never happened.”
His current tenant, Zac Vargas, owner of Space City Vintage, said that Sperl has been supportive of independent businesses like his and is building something good at his 1st Street property with a racially diverse group of creatives operating ventures such as an upcycle shop and leather works store.
“I mean, he's a good guy,” Vargas said. “They made him like he's an ugly person.”
Vargas said that Sperl is involved in rescuing strays and beautifying the neighborhood by getting rid of graffiti and cleaning the sidewalks.
Zac Vargas owns Space City Vintage, next to the former Suehiro Cafe.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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With the relationship between Sperl and community activists frayed to bits, Vargas acts as a go-between, passing messages between the two parties.
He’s also been in charge of showing the former Suehiro space to potential tenants and is eager for it to be occupied.
“All I want is peace,” said Vargas, who recalls the protests spilling onto his storefront. “I want everybody to make a living and move on.”
