05 May Suehiro is Coming Home to Little Tokyo
Suehiro is Coming Home to Little Tokyo
The iconic 54-year-old restaurant returns after eviction in 2023
The beloved Suehiro Cafe is coming back to Little Tokyo. After being evicted in 2023, the family-owned Japanese restaurant will return as a tenant in Go For Broke Plaza & First Street North Residences, Little Tokyo Service Center’s new mixed-use development in the heart of historic Little Tokyo.
Little Tokyo is the heart and soul of Suehiro, and LTSC is the reason we’re able to come home. The last few years were a blur, but now that we signed the lease at First Street North, we have an anchor.
- Kenji Suzuki, Suehiro owner
Honoring the Past | Securing the Future
Go For Broke Plaza & First Street North Residences is built on land the Little Tokyo community lost to eminent domain during urban renewal in the 1950s. For decades, it sat as a surface parking lot. LTSC, in partnership with Go For Broke National Education Center, is transforming the site into one of the City of Los Angeles’s largest 100% affordable housing developments with 248 units of affordable housing and 40,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.
This marks the first time in decades that Little Tokyo has expanded its borders, with Suehiro’s return being the exact kind of homecoming this project was designed to make possible.
With over 20 of Little Tokyo’s small businesses lost during the COVID-19 pandemic — and immigrant-owned businesses now facing economic pressure from federal tariff policies — the stakes for legacy businesses like Suehiro are high. This new LTSC commercial space offers stability, affordability, and a supportive community that the open market cannot match.
Suehiro is more than a restaurant. It is a symbol of everything Little Tokyo stands for — immigrant grit, community love, and the refusal to disappear. Protecting Little Tokyo’s future through community-driven projects like First Street North is exactly what LTSC was built to do.
— Takao Suzuki, Co-Executive Director of Little Tokyo Service Center
Commercial Space Now Available
Go For Broke Plaza & First Street North Residences will offer approximately 40,000 square feet of ground-floor retail along Jackson Street, with commercial spaces available for lease.
Ideal tenants include:
- Legacy and long-standing Little Tokyo small businesses
- Community-based nonprofit organizations
- Cultural institutions serving the Japanese American and broader AANHPI community
- Businesses that complement and strengthen the existing Little Tokyo neighborhood
For commercial leasing inquiries, contact: Erich Nakano | enakano@LTSC.orgcreate new email | 213-473-3030 or visit www.LTSC.org/FSN.
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