Landlord In Little Tokyo Gentrification Battle Says New Tenant Will Be Another Restaurant

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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The former Suehiro kitchen.

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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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The signs posted on a window outside the former Suehiro Cafe read "Fake News. No Dispensary. No Marijuana. Someone Lied?"

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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.

The last year has seen Shabu Shabu House’s aging owners close its doors after decades of operation in Japanese Village Plaza. A few storefronts down from Suehiro, the owner of Little Tokyo Arts and Gifts, which was founded after WWII, announced it was shuttering last December.

Suehiro’s Suzuki had said he almost closed during the pandemic but stuck it out to honor his mother’s legacy.

Community reacts

Suehiro will be irreplaceable, said David Monkawa, a member of the anti-gentrification coalition that includes his group, Save Our Seniors Network as well as J-Town Action & Solidarity and Greater LA Japanese American Civic League.

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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“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.

Suehiro may be out of the neighborhood for now, but there are plans for it to return. The restaurant’s Instagram account announced that it expects to be back in 2026 as a tenant of a new mixed-use development being built by the Little Tokyo Service Center.

Talk of Melrose

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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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.”