A Brief History of Flushing From a Business Perspective
Flushing is a neighborhood that is in the north-central part of Queens. It is a large commercial and retail area and is the fourth largest central business district in New York City. During the nineteenth century, New York City continued to grow in population size and economic vitality and so did Flushing. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, much of central Flushing, once celebrated for its country-squire atmosphere, was smothered with four- and five-story apartment buildings, which extended block after block along many streets. (Marshall, Helen). Opportunity for new groups to move in and establish commercial bases came from the depression of retail property values following the economic catastrophe that befell New York City in the 1970s.
Small businesses owned by Chinese immigrants are prevalent in the Flushing area. Between 1994 and 2004, businesses grew by 55 percent in Flushing, Queens. According to a Daily News article, “When these folks show up at the door of technical advisers, there must be culturally-competent advisers there,” said Joyce Moy, executive director of the Asian and Asian-American Research Institute at CUNY. Local business owners often struggle to fill out forms in English or figure out how to secure funding or loans available to them.
Chinese and Korean Supermarkets in Downtown Flushing
Chinese supermarkets supply Flushing’s Asian residents with a plethora of authentic goods from China, Korea, and Japan. For example, the Hong Kong Plaza Supermarket has groceries imported from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries. Before 2003, the supermarkets were overcrowded with cardboard boxes and filth on the floors as the markets were filled with the stench of a variety of different types of fish. But now, Asian markets in Flushing are much cleaner as a result of the newly enforced strict sanitation regulations of the city. The most attractive aspects of the Chinese supermarkets are the low prices of produce.
Downtown Flushing is considered a large commercial and retail area and Flushing’s business community has grown for the past three decades and is now considered the fourth largest business district in New York City. Flushing has an extremely large number of Chinese or Asian owned banks such as the Bank of East Asia, a Chinese owned bank, and Shinhan Bank, a Korean owned bank. Besides competition from many big named American banks such as Chase and Citibank, Asian owned banks still flourish because many immigrants, specifically Chinese and Taiwanese, prefer to speak their native language at the bank with tellers and say they find more personal touch at Asian owned banks. New immigrants,also, don’t trust foreigners especially when it comes to their savings so while having an account in a big named American bank, they also have an account in an Asian owned bank. According to Thomas Tai, president of the Flushing Chinese Business Association, “Chinese banks thrive because of their personal relationships since they pay attention to past records, reputations of friends and family from the original country.”