LOS ANGELES — San Gabriel's Focus Plaza, known affectionately as Chinese Disneyland, has always lived up to its nickname.
The gargantuan Chinese strip mall, anchored by a Chinese grocery store, offers two levels of restaurants, jewelry stores and ginseng stores, culminating in a multistory glass-fronted department store with a dim sum restaurant on the top floor. Its vast parking lot fits more than a thousand cars, which never seemed to make it any easier to find a spot.
The plaza's opening in 1990 signaled that the center of the Chinese community in Southern California had shifted east from Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles. But now owner Tawa, which runs the Ranch 99 grocery chain, is planning a renovation that will transform Focus Plaza into a more modern, affluent commercial center resembling those in Irvine, Pasadena and Costa Mesa.
