Paint the town Thai

Albany Park gets a makeover.

By Alexia Severson

Songkran, the Thai New Year celebrated in mid-April, is also known as “The Water Festival” because participants toss H2O all over one another — a tradition that stems from Thailand’s scorching spring temperatures. For the 2013 holiday, Chicago’s Thai community will have even more to celebrate with the expected grand opening of the $3 million Thai Town Center.

When world-renowned chef Arun Sampanthavivat, took a break from working on his doctorate in Asian affairs to open up his eponymous Albany Park restaurant, Arun’s, he didn’t expect that 28 years later he would be leading the development of a Thai Town in Chicago. The center will house a permanent residence for the office of the Thai-American Association of Illinois, an affordable Thai restaurant and a spa service.

Thais currently looking for a home-country culture fix may head to Chinatown, a 90-year-old neighborhood that is home to more than 16,200 Chinese-Americans and two Thai-themed restaurants. Many of the 2,658 Thais in the city live in Albany Park, where Sampanthavivat is developing Thai Town.

He met with the Thai Consulate and Mayor Richard M. Daley eight years ago to scout locations for the center, and then enlisted Sunny Leon, the president and CEO of SuncasTV. Leon is now principal for the Thai Town Center Inc. development team. A year later, with the help of the city and local aldermen, they decided the best spot for the Thai Town Center would be the former police station at 4461 N. Pulaski Road. In April 2012, they received a building permit.

Thai Town’s execution requires two phases, Leon says. The first is constructing a three-story main center that spans as much as 22,000 square feet, including parking spaces and the surrounding area. The Thai-American Association of Illinois offices will be on the ground floor, the Thai tapas restaurant on the first floor and the spa service on the second. Plans for phase two are still being discussed, but Leon says the goal is to add restaurants and retailers to the Pulaski corridor.

“Thais deserve their own special neighborhood, just like Chinatown, Greek Town and Little Italy,” says 39th Ward Alderman Margaret Laurino, who has been working with Sampanthavivat on the development of Thai Town since its fruition.
The Thai Town Center will strengthen both the cultural community and the economy by bringing in businesses from Thailand and creating new jobs for the people of Chicago, Leon says.

The Breakdown on Thailand

Location:
Southeastern Asia, bordering the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, southeast of Burma

Ethnicities:
Thai 75 percent, Chinese 14 percent, other 11 percent

Languages:
Thai, English, ethnic and regional dialects

Religions:
Buddhist 94.6 percent, Muslim 4.6 percent, Christian 0.7 percent, other 0.1 percent

Population:
67,091,089

Sources: 2000 Census and cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/th.html