CLEVELAND, Ohio -- And we thought the last order of shrimp fried rice was out the door.

Cleveland's defunct Chinatown, a cluster of storefronts in the 2100 block of Rockwell Avenue, is showing glimmering signs of rebirth. What was shuttered and paint-peeling for years now hosts a parade of polished brass doors and overhanging green-glazed roof tiles.

Inside, workers for the Chinatown Development Limited Co. are installing carved and gilded door frames, metallic wallpaper and crystal chandeliers for a planned five-restaurant complex.

"One restaurant will serve traditional Chinese food, one Malaysian, one health food, one vegetarian and one hot pot [broth-simmered dishes]," said Jason Lin, a leader in the local Chinese-American community helping to promote the project.

"We are building a whole street of restaurants," he said, "a food street."

Also included are plans for a series of upstairs residences intended for students from China studying at Cleveland State University, and a small museum of local Chinese history.

The development group can't say when the complex will be open for business. The project recently hit a snag getting a permit for the residences upstairs, said Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman.

At issue, he said, is whether the Chinatown building has had continuous residential tenants. If the developers cannot prove that, they face more-stringent building codes, and more expenses, such as adding a sprinkler system upstairs.

"We are going to get this fixed," Cimperman said recently, while waiting to schedule a meeting with the city's code enforcement officials. The permit problem was typical of developers working with older properties, he said.

Lin, the project spokesman, said the budget for the redo will top $1 million. He translated for Shao Jia Huang, a Philadelphia developer who is managing the construction for two Chinese-American investors who do not want to be identified. Those investors hope to attract additional money from mainland China, where the economy is growing at a rate of more than 9 percent, compared with U.S. growth of 2 percent, according to CNN.

Workers recently moved a truckload of hand-carved stone zodiac symbols made in Guangdong Province, which Lin said will eventually line the street out front.

The Guangdong connection is meaningful. Many of Cleveland's first Chinese immigrants were from that area of southern China. Lin said he hopes the new museum will be a touchstone and showcase for that early history.

The city's first wave of Chinese immigrants came in the 1860s from railroad work out West, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. They settled around Public Square, but when big projects such as Terminal Tower started, they moved to the Euclid Avenue and East 55th Street area.

In the 1920s, the local Chinese community built the multistorefront Chinatown building on Rockwell, which is now being renovated. On Leong Tong, a merchant association, moved its headquarters to that block around 1930.

The street thrived for decades. Golden Coins, 3 Chinese Sisters, Kwong Chou, Golden Gate and Shanghai were among the restaurants that drew patrons from across the region.

Cimperman, 41, grew up nearby and remembers going there as a 4-year-old.





"My father took me to the Shanghai to learn how to use chopsticks," he said. "He wanted me to get some culture."

The last restaurant on the street was Wu's, which took over the Shanghai space in 2006 and closed a few years later. Chinatown disappeared while "Asiatown" was growing a few blocks away at East 30th Street and Payne Avenue, filled with Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants.

Developers hope to use the project as a calling card for a delegation of investors from Guangdong who are coming to the United States this month, about the same time as celebrations for the 100-year anniversary of the revolution that created the Republic of China.

Cimperman said he was pleased that the project includes a traditional Chinese restaurant, since the original Chinatown designation has been eclipsed by pan-Asian offerings in the neighborhood. The continued success of those restaurants shows the viability of adding more, he said.

Lin said he's eager to see mainland Chinese investing in Cleveland.

"We've been outsourcing for years," he said of the United States. "It's time to bring some of that money back here."

Plain Dealer News Researcher JoEllen Corrigan contributed to this story.