OAKLAND — Standing in sharp contrast to the city’s booming economy a few blocks away, Oakland’s historic Chinatown — a once-bustling hub of activity night and day — is dotted with vacant, graffitied storefronts and many businesses are struggling.

While restaurants pour into the Uptown and downtown neighborhoods and the city’s office market climbs ever higher along with rents, “Chinatown is slowly becoming a forgotten community,” said Patty Sayarad-Lee, vice president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

“Every district — Oakland Uptown, Old Oakland, Jack London, Lakeshore, Rockridge, Montclair — is capitalizing on the rising economy and new tech money,” Sayarad-Lee said. “However, Chinatown is missing the boat because we are not an enticing community to visit.”

A confluence of factors has hobbled Chinatown, several square blocks south of Broadway, sandwiched between downtown, Jack London Square and the Lake Merritt neighborhoods: rising rents that threaten to displace longtime residents and businesses; competition from Asian communities and business that have sprouted in the suburbs; the struggle by shop owners to adjust to changing tastes and a changing business climate that includes minimum wage increases; and younger generations of Chinatown residents who leave family retail businesses in favor of other professions.

The city doesn’t track commercial vacancies by neighborhood, but business owners and residents talk of a slowdown in foot traffic in the area, and a recent walk around Webster, Eighth and Ninth streets revealed at least a few empty storefronts. There are fewer restaurants that cater to a hungry dinner crowd.

Lei Hua Fen moved to Oakland’s Chinatown from China about three years ago to explore new opportunities in the United States. Since that time, there are fewer people walking around, fewer customers at the restaurants she has worked at, and businesses often close early, she said.

She recently lost her job at a restaurant because business was slow, she said through a translator, although she would not name the spot.

Translating for her was Carl Chan, who, in addition to running East Bay real estate firm Claremont Development, sits on multiple boards, such as the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, Visit Oakland and Asian Health Services, which contributes to his image (and nickname) as the unofficial “mayor of Chinatown.”

He attributes much of the decline to the 36 percent minimum wage hike that went into effect last year, bringing Oakland’s minimum wage from $9 to $12.25 per hour. It’s a gripe heard from businesses throughout the Bay Area and other places with steep minimum wage increases, but Chinatown, which consists almost completely of small family-owned businesses that are frequented by fixed-income seniors, does indeed seem to struggle under the hike.

Terri Huang, who owns a small grocery store in the area with her husband, said, through Chan, that since the hike, she’s had to make slight price adjustments and work with employees to reduce hours — better, she said, than having to lay them off. But in a community that serves a lot of people on fixed incomes, even small price increases can be a huge hit.

It’s not the only factor affecting business in the area.

In addition to rising rents, Asian-Americans who have moved from the city to the suburbs have more options for finding goods and services that used to require a trip to Chinatown, Chan said.

With the spread of specialty markets carrying a variety of Asian produce, spices and other goods, and the growth of Southern California-based Asian-American market 99 Ranch, which has 14 stores in the greater Bay Area, including in Concord, Richmond, Fremont, Dublin and Pleasanton, shoppers can buy the hard-to-find ingredients and imported goods that were previously almost exclusive to Chinatown.

Chan believes the way to help bring foot traffic back to Chinatown is to build more housing. But that’s a controversial stance in an area where opinions differ over how much housing to develop and whether it should prioritize low-income residents. Many groups have called for more affordable housing options in the area.

He said he doesn’t care much what kind of housing is built, as long there is more supply to meet demand. Gilbert Gong, who runs the Lincoln Square Recreation Center in Chinatown, was more specific.

“The chamber is banking on more market-rate housing, which typically brings more residents with disposable incomes that could be supporting local businesses,” Gong said. “It’s not that they don’t want affordable housing, but fixed-income families don’t have the same capacity to sustain businesses.”

Gong and Chan pointed to new spots that are reflective of the trends in Asian dining and could point the way for Chinatown’s future, such as new tea shops and a diverse array of restaurants that offer noodles, dumplings and regional cuisines such as Sichuan or Shandong food, as opposed to the traditional Cantonese style that dominated the area for so long.

Even refreshing old businesses seems to be an economic boost. Jack Zheng, who owns Yet Sun Market, recently reopened after a fire destroyed some of the market last year. A subsequent remodel has rendered the market like new, and, Zheng said through Chan, in recent weeks, business has been strong.

Many Chinatown stakeholders are hoping for a similar sprucing up along city streets and storefronts. Graffiti-covered buildings are more pervasive than ever, and the area doesn’t get the same cleanup help as some other commercial neighborhoods that have established business and community benefit districts. In those districts, businesses and commercial property owners, and sometimes residential property owners, tax themselves to provide extra services such as street and sidewalk cleaning and security patrols, but Chinatown hasn’t established one. Instead, Chan is trying to organize volunteer cleanup days to remove graffiti and make other aesthetic street improvements, which will likely start in the next couple of months.

His other big initiative, in an effort to infuse night life activity into the area, is to establish a regular night market, similar to the successful Friday night gatherings at Oakland Museum of California, where food truck organizer Off the Grid hosts a weekly outdoor food truck pop-up, or the Oakland First Fridays festival and Art Murmur gallery walk that stretches along Telegraph Avenue from Uptown to Koreatown-Northgate on the first Friday night of the month.

The Chinatown version, while still in the initial planning stages, would be held monthly, and perhaps eventually weekly, with booths featuring local Chinatown restaurants, businesses, and performances and entertainment at the Lincoln Square Recreation Center. The center has turned into a hub for young and old residents under Gong’s guidance.

Nonprofit institutions in the area are another potential avenue for drawing people back into the neighborhood.

Asian Health Services, a health center that offers multilingual services, has a large presence in the area. It bought and moved into the former Silver Dragon Restaurant — a popular fixture for weddings, family gatherings and banquets, which closed in 2012 after 60 years.

“I do see a trend of businesses struggling in Chinatown, but as a community health center, we are a trusted institution that generates over 400 jobs and brings over 26,000 people who access our services, who then eat at the restaurants, shop, go to the Chinatown library,” said Julia Liou, planning and development director at the organization. “As that type of institution, we really are an economic catalyst.”

But for any revitalization efforts to work, Liou said, the city and community leaders need to prioritize communities such as Chinatown that have experienced a long history of displacement and containment.

“Chinatown residents are feeling it, and the businesses, too,” Liou said. “While our neighborhood is a vibrant cultural hub, because the majority of households are low-income, limited English-speaking immigrants who are highly rent burdened, and our resources, such as our local recreation center are over capacity, there needs to be investment in neighborhoods like ours — ones that need it the most.”

Contact Annie Sciacca at 925-943-8073. Follow her at Twitter.com/anniesciacca.