The Wong Plan: Wok & Roll Founder Wants to Make SPURA 100 Percent Affordable, Build Giant Bus Depot

reprints


For more than four decades, Lower East Siders have been fighting to redevelop the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, more commonly known by the (fittingly) ominous acronym SPURA. Just this year a breakthrough came, but another fight has ensued over the specifics of the plan. A grassroots citizen coalition wants the project devoted entirely to affordable housing, contrary to the city’s more market-driven mixed-income approach.

Could their salvation come in the form of the founder of the ubiquitous Chinese fast food chain Wok & Roll, an institution more at home in the food courts and airports of middle America than the streets of downtown?
Read More