After nearly a decade of negotiations, San Francisco’s Chinatown is about to get a significant cultural upgrade. The six-story Empress building at 838 Grant Ave. has been sold to the Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative (CMAC), a coalition of nonprofits that plans to transform it into a hub for Asian American arts, culture, and history.

The $32 million sale marks a major victory for community activists who have been pushing for this change since the Empress of China restaurant, once a legendary spot that hosted everyone from Sammy Davis Jr. to Mick Jagger, closed back in 2014. Building owner John Yee had resisted selling or partnering with CMAC for years, but tensions finally thawed in 2024 when the Rose Pak Community Fund held an event at the property.

What makes this deal really exciting is what comes next. CMAC isn’t just stopping at the Empress building. The organization envisions linking this property with other Chinatown sites to create a network of cultural spaces, basically a campus dedicated to Asian American art and community programming. They’ve already secured $26 million in state funding and purchased the neighboring property at 800 Grant Ave. Sister organizations already occupy buildings on Grant, Ross, and Clay streets, so the groundwork is there.

The current restaurants operating in the building, Empress by Boon on the top floor and City View dim sum on the ground level, will stay open at least through their existing leases. The middle floors, which currently house fewer than a dozen office tenants, will be reimagined for the organization’s vision.

CMAC’s board includes some serious players in the city’s cultural and community spaces. You’ve got former Supervisor Mabel Teng, Stephen Gong (former executive director of the Center for Asian American Media), Vincent Pan from Chinese for Affirmative Action, and Jay Xu, the former director of the Asian Art Museum who’s also working on a national commission to create an Asian American history museum in Washington, D.C.

Ex-Assemblymember Phil Ting, who helped fund CMAC’s earlier property purchase when he was budget chair, called the deal “a huge win for Chinatown”. He highlighted what’s really at stake here: “It’s really about owning our future, owning our own destiny, and being able to tell our stories”.

Of course, there are challenges ahead. CMAC will need to raise tens of millions more to actually build out the spaces and launch programming. San Francisco’s Mexican Museum has struggled with similar fundraising efforts for a renovation project, so CMAC knows the road won’t be easy. But for a community that’s been fighting to preserve its cultural identity and control its own narrative, this sale is a significant step forward.