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This past Friday the City Council unanimously approved the selection of the Nikkei Center as development partner for the “Mangrove Parcel” at 1st and Alameda, the last large undeveloped plot of land left in Little Tokyo, reports Little Tokyo Unblogged.

The team is led by the Little Tokyo Service Center, Kaji & Associates, Urban Partners and the Jerde Partnership.

As we wrote back in March about the three proposals put forth for the parcel, Nikkei Center — which was selected in June by a Council committee — would include 390 units of rental housing (28% affordable), 80,000 square feet of retail, 166,500 square feet of office space and 1,286 parking spaces.

Following the Council’s action, details must still be worked out for the purchase of the city-owned land.

The Project Revealed

The development team relied on their past experience in developing large mixed-use projects in Japan and Southern California, including Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills, Riverwalk Kitakyushu and Canal City Hakata in Fukuoka, Japan.

New renderings made available to angelenic show a continuation of the bright, colorful and modern projects that have come to boost Japan’s major cities.

Still, questions remain about the project’s interaction with not only the new light rail station on Alameda, but its impact on the pedestrian experience along 1st Street. Retail and its effects on the perception of activity and safety must be taken into consideration. If a visitor’s first experience with the project is a blank, inactive wall, that affects the success of the project and neighborhood.

Case in point: While some residential projects in the area were built without ground-floor retail in order to lighten the competition with Little Tokyo’s existing mom-and-pop stores, that may be one contributing factor those same stores’ being pushed out in favor of national chains now.

Those involved with the Nikkei Center have expressed a strong desire to recruit Japanese-themed retail to the project.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

-mangrove parcel infill proposals would redefine little tokyo
-nikkei center plan selected for little tokyo’s mangrove parcel

Renderings made available courtesy the Little Tokyo Service Center.