Lin, the CEO of UMRE Real Estate Group and president of the Katy Asian Town Homeowner's Association, was the master broker and developer for the original Katy Asian Town plaza at the intersection of I-10 and Grand Parkway.ĪT THE BEGINNING: Asian population growth spurs suburban Chinatown in Katy Josie Lin, AMA Kitchen foundner, poses for a photograph during soft opening of the restaurant Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at Katy Asian Town in Katy. They started on the plan for Katy Asian Town in 2016, according to Josie Lin. More than three decades later, developers spotted another opportunity to create an enclave of Asian retailers, this time in Katy. Beyond Beltway 8, the opening of Hong Kong City Mall at Bellaire Boulevard and Boone Road spurred many Vietnamese businesses to open in the area, forming a Little Saigon. Li, a real estate agent and founder of the Southwest Realty Group, recruited businesses from the West Coast and Taiwan to come out to the "new world" that was being built on Bellaire Boulevard, he said. It started with one 30,000-square-foot retail center, Diho Plaza, anchored by a grocery store founded by Li's uncle and is today Jusgo Superarket. Yi-Chin Lee/Staff photographerĪSIAN IMMIGRATION: How Houston became one of the largest Asian American communities in the US Kenneth Li, founding chairman of the Southwest District, poses for a photograph at Dun Huang Plaza Thursday, May 25, 2023, in Houston. Li and others saw an opportunity to create a new outpost of Asian businesses and culture in an area that already had a strong middle class neighborhood: Sharpstown. Houston's Asian population was booming at the time, driven in large part by Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants seeking to open their own businesses. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was hard to find a vacant space in the area, according to Kenneth Li.
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From the 1930s to the 1980s, that title belonged solely to an area in EaDo where Chinese bakeries, grocery stores and movie theaters made their home. Developing Chinatown and Asian Townĭespite its prominence today, the Chinatown on Bellaire Boulevard wasn't Houston's first Chinatown. The largest community, Vietnamese Americans, has more than 141,000 members in Harris and Fort Bend counties combined, followed by Indian Americans at just under 139,000 and Chinese Americans at more than 102,000, according to the 2021 American Community Survey run by the Census Bureau. In Fort Bend County, just south of Katy and west of Chinatown, Asian Americans make up more than 23 percent of the population - the proportion in Texas.
In the Houston area, you can find pockets of Asian businesses and culture from Sugar Land to Pasadena, but it's the communities on Bellaire Boulevard's Chinatown and Katy that are working together - not against each other - to make the region a hub for international brands.Īccording to census data, Harris County's Asian population grew 40 percent between 20, with more than 392,000 people identifying as Asian on the 2020 census, about 8 percent of the Harris County population.
It isn't unusual for a city with a large Asian population to have two or more hubs of Asian businesses: Chicago has both its Chinatown and a concentrated Asian community on Argyle Street further north, and Lower Manhattan's Chinatown co-exists with nearby communities in Flushing, Queens. This is Katy Asian Town, a more recent addition to the region that has established itself as a destination for international businesses to enter the Houston market. But drive west down I-10 and you'll find another booming set of retail centers filled with bakeries, boba shops and bánh mì restaurants.
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