The Austin Statesman Reported that the new $30 million Asian-themed Chinatown Center is open at North Lamar Boulevard and Kramer Lane in North Austin. I have been to the Chinatown in the Memorial area of Houston. Their center is much larger, but it's great seeing Austin have some similar.
A traditional Chinese gate soars above a Capital Metro bus stop, leading to the 180,000-square-foot retail giant, anchored by the relocated and vastly expanded MT Supermarket. "We want to make a home base for Asian culture and bring more people into the Asian way of life," says Alexander Tan, chairman of Tan International Group, which developed the Chinatown Center. North Austin's Asian population is on the rise, and Chinatown Center, opened two weeks ago at 10901 N. Lamar Blvd., was built to serve a portion of that community.
Central Texas' Asian population - Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indonesians, Vietnamese, and so fort - is growing so rapidly that Ryan Robinson, City of Austin demographer, projects that by 2015, there could be more Asians in the city than African Americans (8.5 percent of an estimated total population of 781,984 are projected to be African Americans, and 9.2 percent Asians). Part of those projections is based on the rapid recent rise in Asian immigrants. In 1990, about 15,000 Asians, making up 3.3 percent of the total population, lived in Austin. By 2006, those numbers jumped to approximately 45,000, making up 6.2 percent of the city's population. And approximately 30,000 of those live within a five-mile radius of the Chinatown Center.
Already open at the center is the MT Supermarket - the 68,000-square-foot anchor tenant - which formerly operated from a 15,000-square-foot store known as My Thanh Oriental Market at 7601 N. Lamar Blvd.
Austin is a culturally diverse city and I'm more apt to eat at an Asian restaurant than any other. My friends and I regularly dine at Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, or Indonesian restaurants. Although the center is not completely full yet, we look forward to the various ethnic retail and food operations that will be coming in.
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