"It's exciting because progress is going fairly fast right now, and the City is committed to it." That's Larry Hirahara, a founding board member of the Asian Cultural Experience of Salinas, speaking to Monterey County Now about the Republic Café's renovation in May. The Republic Café has been described as almost-finished for the better part of twenty years. This fall, the project has seen new developments.
On September 1, the Salinas City Council voted to name Hirahara the Honorary Mayor of Chinatown, a title created to recognize what he calls more than two decades of volunteering on the neighborhood's revitalization. The plaque and the ceremony are symbolic. A separate development this fall is that, for the first time since the project started, the Republic Café has professional museum designers and a Smithsonian curator attached to it.
The Republic Café's Path to a Museum
The Republic Café opened in 1941, built by Wallace Ahtye and his business partner Bow Chin on Soledad Street. At 150 seats it was the largest Chinese restaurant in the area, and it hosted Lunar New Year celebrations, weddings, and banquets for the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, and African American families who worked and lived in Chinatown. Mrs. Ahtye kept the restaurant running from the family's residence above it until her death in 1988. The building has sat vacant for close to four decades since.
What happened in between is a pattern worth naming, because it's the reason a title like Honorary Mayor carries weight this year in a way it wouldn't have in 2018.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1988 | Restaurant closes after Mrs. Ahtye's death |
| 2007, 2010 | City adopts its first two Chinatown Revitalization Plans |
| 2010 | Renovation attempt begins with the intent to hand the building to ACE for a museum |
| 2011 | Republic Café listed on the National Register of Historic Places |
| 2019 | City adopts its current, third Chinatown Revitalization Plan |
| Oct. 2022 | Fire damages the building; renovation stalls again |
| 2022 | City purchases the Republic Café along with six other Chinatown properties |
| 2023 | $1.5 million regional grant from AMBAG helps fund site improvements |
| 2025-26 | Facade and structural stabilization underway; fire sprinkler system installed |
| Sept. 2026 | Interior exhibit design begins; Hirahara named Honorary Mayor of Chinatown |
The timeline includes three revitalization plans and a fire, alongside a stalled HUD grant. This fall, the project has moved into exhibit design.
What Changed This Fall
By May of this year, city senior planner Grant Leonard was telling Monterey County Now that the cleanup and structural stabilization work, including a temporary roof and the removal of asbestos, lead, and debris, was nearly done, with the phase expected to wrap that June. ACES confirmed in its summer newsletter that the city had moved into repairing fire-damaged components and installing a fire sprinkler system, work aimed at making the building watertight and vandal resistant. That's construction, and it's the kind that's visible from the sidewalk.
What's new as of this fall is what comes after the walls are sound. During the weekend of September 25, the exhibit design firm Romano & Min Projects toured the building with ACES and local stakeholders, followed by a workshop on September 27. Joining them was Dr. Theo Gonzalves, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and former interim director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. A rendering from TEF Architects, the firm handling the exterior work, shows a design that keeps the building's original facade intact, a requirement tied to its National Register listing.
Bringing in an exhibit design team and a Smithsonian curator is a different kind of commitment than a revitalization plan on paper. It means someone is now deciding what goes on the walls, not just whether the building will stand.
The Neighborhood the Museum Will Tell
Salinas's Chinatown was established on Soledad Street in 1893 by Chinese merchants, after an earlier Chinatown founded in 1872 burned down. By its own account, ACES describes it as the largest active Chinatown between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The neighborhood absorbed successive waves of immigrant laborers who built the region's agricultural economy: Chinese workers in the 1860s, Japanese farm laborers starting around 1910, Filipino laborers in the 1920s, and Mexican braceros in the 1940s. Starting in the late 1950s, federal urban renewal tore down many of the neighborhood's wooden structures, and as families dispersed, Chinatown's businesses closed and buildings were boarded up. Only a handful of the original structures remain, and the Republic Café is one of them.
That layered history is what ACES has spent the past several years documenting, including a three-year exhibition series with the National Steinbeck Center and CSUMB that told the story in the order the communities arrived. The next chapter is already planned. ACES is developing a 2027 Asian Cultural Fair exhibit on Hispanic history in Chinatown, drawing on items like a 1950s photograph of a couple posing inside the Mexican-owned El Faro Café, once located on the same street.
What's Actually on Soledad Street Right Now
You don't need to wait for the museum to open to see any of this. Several pieces of the neighborhood ACES is preserving are already open to the public.
- The ACES gallery, at 21-A Soledad Street in Moongate Plaza, currently shows the exhibit "Religion & Beliefs in Salinas Chinatown, Past & Present," covering the neighborhood's three founding Asian communities.
- The First Mayor's House of Salinas holds a free open house on the first Saturday of every month, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- The Buddhist Temple of Salinas runs regular Tai Chi and Kendo classes and holds services open to the public.
- The Confucius Church has hosted recent Asian Cultural Fair events, including a performance of Steven "Spike" Wong's play Dragon Skin.
- Moongate Plaza itself carries public art tied to the neighborhood's story, including sculpted gates by artist Nada Abdelshahid and a mural titled "Convergence of Butterflies" by JC Gonzales.
Two Dates Before Year End
ACES has two events on the calendar that connect directly to the Republic Café's next phase. On November 7, the organization holds its Annual Tri-Tip Takeout fundraiser, with curbside pickup at the Buddhist Temple of Salinas between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Then on November 12, ACES launches its MCGives matching campaign, aimed at raising funds for the interior exhibit space. The Tanimura Family Foundation has offered a $20,000 matching grant, and ACES needs to raise another $20,000 to unlock it.
No one connected to the project has announced an opening date, and given the building's history, that's probably the right call. This year, exhibit design has begun, with a design firm and a Smithsonian curator involved.
Jose Lopez has worked this stretch of the Central Coast long enough to know that a neighborhood's history is part of what makes it worth paying attention to, long before any of it shows up in a listing. If you want to follow the Republic Café's progress as it happens, ACES posts updates directly through its newsletter, and the gallery at 21-A Soledad Street is open to visitors during its posted hours.
