Asian supermarket in Chino Hills spurs minor protest

The opening of a “Ranch 99″ supermarket in Chino Hills has sparked a minor protest, but seems to have fizzled out and the protesters have found little support among community leaders:

the demographic shift has proved unsettling for some in this upscale San Bernardino County town, and that tension surfaced when a major Asian grocery chain, 99 Ranch Market, announced plans for a Chino Hills store. The Chino Hills City Council heard an outcry from a small group of residents, including one who wrote that he didn’t want to see “little Chinatowns all over the Hills” filled with Asian signs he can’t read.

The skirmish mirrors clashes in the San Gabriel Valley in the 1980s when Asian immigrants moved into the traditionally white and Latino suburbs. When a wave of Asian businesses followed, city officials in Monterey Park tried unsuccessfully to pass English-only ordinances, arguing that Chinese-language business signs would confuse firefighters and emergency workers.

Larry Blugrind of Chino Hills told the City Council in a letter that the store would ‘result in a run-down center that is the equivalent of a Chinese Pic ‘N’ Save less than a mile from the kind of high-quality shops our city has been trying to attract to this area.’ Reached by telephone, Blugrind explained that he enjoyed having a diverse community — his daughter-in-law is Japanese.

“My worry is that 99 Ranch could be a steppingstone for it to become all Asian,” he said. “I don’t want another Hacienda Heights.”

In Chino Hills, the City Council has no say in whether Tawa Supermarkets Inc. can open a 99 Ranch Market. The store is moving into a space formerly occupied by a Ralphs supermarket. It’s a simple case of one grocery store taking over for another, said Mayor Gwenn Norton-Perry. ‘It’s an approved use, and we as a city have no purview over this. That’s the bottom line’” Norton-Perry said….

From 2000 to 2005, the city of 81,000 saw its Asian population jump from 22% to 39%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent survey. Of those, 10,316 were Filipino and 7,752 were Chinese. Asian Indians, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese constitute most of the remaining Asian Americans. The Asian influx has already had an effect on some public services: The Chino Hills library stocks books written in Chinese, Korean and Japanese…

As for the sign, ‘We can tell them we prefer signs to be in English only, but we can’t require it,’ Norton-Perry said. Still, some say the spat is much ado about nothing. ‘Last I remember, the words ‘99 Ranch’ were in English,’ said Don Nakanishi, director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. ‘You have El Pollo Loco,’ he said, referring to the popular Mexican restaurant chain. ‘Nobody’s telling them to translate that.’