LA TIMES July 17th, 2001

K. CONNIE KANG
TIMES STAFF WRITER

A Japanese American group that has spent seven frustrating years trying to develop a community gym on city-owned land in Little Tokyo may finally get a chance at today's City Council meeting.

The council will consider a proposal to discuss the multipurpose gym with the Little Tokyo Service Center. It would sit on land now used for city employee parking.

The nonprofit group wants to build a 40,000-square-foot gym and recreation center in the area known as 1st Street North, where the Japanese American National Museum is located. Once the historic center of Little Tokyo, the area is bounded by Temple, Alameda and Judge John Aiso streets

"We feel relieved and hopeful that this project will move ahead," Bill Watanabe, executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center, said Monday.

The proposed area also houses the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary, the Go for Broke monument to Japanese American veterans of World War II, Union Center for the Arts and the proposed downtown site of the city Children's Museum.

Watanabe said that after the city begins talking with his group, raising money will not be a problem because of community support for the project.

A gym in Little Tokyo for basketball, volleyball, martial arts and community activities has been a dream of Japanese Americans in Southern California for decades.

Even without knowing the prospects for a gym, the nonprofit group's board has raised more than $1 million to build the Little Tokyo Recreational Center.

The location was opposed by Rita Walters, the city councilwoman whose district included Little Tokyo. But now that she has left office because of term limits, gym supporters hope her successor, Jan Perry, will be more open to the project.

Perry, who met Friday with project leaders, heads of institutions on the block and the city's chief legislative analyst, said Monday she supports a "recreational facility" for Little Tokyo and has an open mind on the location. But she also said she is concerned that 1st Street North is already crowded, and she wants to see open space.

Backers of the recreation center were angered last year when the city approved the Children's Museum's request to build at the corner of Temple and Alameda streets--a location that gym advocates had been told would be open space.

They became even more upset last month when they learned that the city was about to let the Children's Museum move to the site they'd requested for the gym, at the corner of Temple and Aiso.

"It's a slap at the community," said Dave Nagano, president of the Little Tokyo Recreational Center board. "We're always being set aside."

Last week nearly 200 gym supporters showed up at City Hall to demonstrate the community's stance. They said they were not opposed to the Children's Museum but want their project to be allowed next to it, saying there was enough land for both.

"We don't have all the political knowledge and know-how to operate, but we do have people," said Nagano. "I don't see how they can ignore what the community wants."

"We are feeling very frustrated," said Lisa Sugino, director of the Little Tokyo Service Center's development arm.

"It's been seven long years of looking for the site. This is the final chance. If we don't [get the location], we have to give back the money we have already collected."