Chinese Beverly Hills

At LAT, "HOW ARCADIA IS REMAKING ITSELF AS A MAGNET FOR CHINESE MONEY":

Most Los Angeles architects are lucky if they complete two or three houses by their early 30s.

Thirty-one-year-old Philip Chan, who runs a firm in Arcadia called PDS Studio, has already seen more than 75 of his residential designs built across the San Gabriel Valley.

He's still not the best-known designer in Arcadia. That title belongs to Robert Tong, 54, founder of the equally prolific firm Sanyao International.

A growing architectural rivalry between the two men is a key part of a construction wave that is radically remaking Arcadia. Blocks that were once sleepy, with single-story ranch houses from the 1940s set comfortably back from the street, are now lined with bloated villas pushed near the front of their lots as if clamoring for attention.

Chan and Tong, whose names are featured in San Gabriel Valley real estate listings as prominently as Frank Gehry's is on the Westside, tailor their showy Mediterranean-style houses to appeal to wealthy Chinese buyers, many looking to park some of their money here or to enroll their children in American schools.

In the last year alone, more than 90 houses have sold for more than $2.5 million in Arcadia, a city of 56,000 that sits just east of Pasadena at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Prices in Arcadia are up more than 39% from their peak in 2007 before the housing downturn. The city, now 60% Asian, has become more expensive than Calabasas, the suburban enclave that is home to Justin Bieber and the Kardashians. It's become known as the "Chinese Beverly Hills."

What's happening in Arcadia is less about big new houses and startling sales figures than how new patterns of immigration are transforming the architecture of Southern California. New arrivals from China are not victims of change, as they were when Southern California's original Chinatown was razed in the 1930s to make way for Union Station.

This time around they're the ones with the economic power. The architectural landscape is being remade not to displace them but as a magnet for their money...

Interesting.

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