Asian Hall of Fame Coming to the Great Park in Irvine
- Eric Marchese
- Sep 11, 2024
- 14 min read
Updated: Sep 18, 2024
OC Music and Dance is giving the Pasadena-based cultural institution entrée into an 800-seat multipurpose venue slated to open at the Great Park in 2027.
A seemingly straightforward and routine press release dated June 5 reports that Pasadena-based Asian Hall of Fame, which issued the release, is teaming up with Orange County Music and Dance “to build a state-of-the-art performing arts center at Irvine Great Park.”
Anyone reading it couldn’t be faulted for being inclined to ask: “How is the creation of yet another performing arts venue in Orange County of interest to me?”
Indeed, most Irvine and O.C. residents might not recognize this project’s significance. But according to the release, the 800-seat, 15,000-square-foot venue, slated to open in 2027, will “become the first such Asian and Indigenous facility in the United States.”
This is, again, a seemingly innocuous statement, but think about it closely: The presence, culture, art, music, cuisine and more of millions of Asians of countless nations have, over decades and centuries, become part of the fabric of American life – and yet this project, located in the heart of Orange County, will be the first of its kind in the United States.
The release notes that Irvine has the fifth-largest Asian population in the U.S. – a fact confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau, one that attracted the Asian Hall of Fame to Orange County and led to its partnership with OC Music and Dance.
And here’s another fact, not covered in the press release that’s almost equally startling: Until just a handful of months ago, the paths of the leaders of Asian Hall of Fame and OCMD had never crossed.
Their intersecting plans led them to realize how closely their goals align, fast-tracking a project through which each will realize immense benefits.
In a nutshell, OCMD gets a big chunk of funding toward kickstarting construction of the project; Asian Hall of Fame gains access toward a state-of-the-art performing arts venue, naming rights and a foothold in a prestigious, Asian-heavy city in Orange County.
A School in Need of Resources – and a New Venue
Douglas K. Freeman, CEO and executive chair of OC Music and Dance, relates that the school “was formed as a nonprofit organization in July 2016, and we opened our doors in March 2017. Our school offered lessons and performance opportunities for children ages 5 to 18 years of age and provided financial assistance to enable nearly 40% of our children from low-income families to attend.”
Freeman said that the building had been given to the school “free and clear” by Charlie Zhang, founder of Pick Up Stix and on Pacific Symphony’s board of directors. Zhang is also on the Asian Hall of Fame’s board of governors – but more on that later.
As Freeman relates, the OCMD facility “has been a wonderful home for us, but it has several drawbacks, most important of which is it’s an office building. It wasn’t built for a school.”
Within two years of opening, enrollment maxed out at 450 students. “The demand for our school made it clear that we needed to expand our 21,000-square-foot facility.”
Freeman reached out to Five Point Communities, whose CEO offered them land at the Great Park. Then along came COVID and conversations stalled out.
Changes in Five Points’ leadership prompted Freeman to “knock on the door of city management,” which led to feasibility studies aimed at creating a strategic plan and a serious plan for development of the Great Park as site for a new OCMD facility.
That was roughly 18 months ago. As Freeman puts it, “what could have been a very long series of steps” was fast-tracked by the city.
The city of Irvine offered Freeman and the OCMD about two acres that they could start developing for construction.
Freeman told Culture OC his school’s “real goal has been to build a facility designed specifically from the ground up to give our aspiring young artists the environment, tools and opportunities that would optimize their personal journey.”
The Spotlight (Finally) Shines on Accomplished yet Unheralded Asians
Located in Pasadena, 48 miles north of the OCMD, is the Asian Hall of Fame, whose website said it was established in 2004 “to educate the public about Asian contributions to the United States and the world, advance early career development, and promote Asian artistic excellence and cross-cultural narratives.”
Its June 5 release touts the entity as “a cultural, educational, and research institution that elevates public perception of Asian and Indigenous legacy in America and globally.”
Among its numerous inductees are Robert and Ruth Chinn, Margaret Cho, Judy Chu, Connie Chung, Senator Tammy Duckworth, James Hong, Carrie Ann Inaba, Kevin Kwan, Nancy Kwan, Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee, Dr. Linda M. Liau, Freddie Mercury, Norm Mineta, Anna May Wong and Kristi Yamaguchi.
Maki Hsieh, president and CEO of the Robert Chinn Foundation, which runs and operates the Asian Hall of Fame, said the concept for the Hall of Fame can be credited to Ruth Wong and her daughter Karen, undergirded by the fact that Asian leaders were not getting recognition.
The Hall of Fame came into existence in 2004, inducing its first class of honorees, with the concept snowballing and attracting the likes of Chung, Bruce Lee, Yamaguchi and 130 others who have since been inducted.
The institution’s first founding board of governors led Hsieh to Zhang and other successful Asian business people in Southern California.
Yet in its 20 years, the organization has never had its own brick-and-mortar space. Its 133 inductees and eight “goodwill ambassadors” – can only be seen in one place: the organization’s website.
Whenever a new individual was to be feted and inducted, the Hall of Fame would have to rent a facility for ceremonies and a more-or-less annual gala – frequently, the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Hsieh said in 2019, right before the COVID pandemic, they got a multiyear sponsorship from the Robert Chinn Foundation providing financial support in the form of multicultural generational grants.
Discovering that nine out of 10 of the Asians Hsieh was dealing with either worked or lived in greater Los Angeles or Southern California prompted her, in July 2020, to urge the foundation to move its operations from Seattle to Pasadena.
Hsieh told Culture OC that up until its fortuitous meeting with OCMD this past spring, the institution “had been looking for a city as a hub for five years – not a community center, but a world-class hub for our distinguished leaders to impact social change.”
Rochelle Srigley, Asian Hall of Fame’s managing director of public affairs, says the 20-year-old organization “previously owned and operated a community center in Seattle, but it was not a physical Hall of Fame.” Currently, the only place to see its 20 years’ worth of inductees is on its website.
Hsieh said there was “nothing wrong with having a gala once a year, but we’re a Hall of Fame. We need to have a center. It doesn’t have to be a $100 million center, but it has to be in the right city.” The creation of such a center and its location is “a huge vision that has to last 100 years.”
Hsieh noted that “all Asian HOFs are in China, Japan or Korea,” with only one in North America – in Canada. The United States, she said, has no such entity; the Smithsonian has a traveling Asian American exhibit but there are no permanent institutions in the U.S.
North American institutions that recognize Asians worldwide
Managing director of public affairs Rochelle Srigley says she and others at the Asian Hall of Fame “are incredibly excited about the new PAC, with plans that are ambitious but inclusive. We are pioneering the first performing arts center for all Asians – not just Chinese or AAPI, but also Indigenous peoples in the United States.”
Srigley provided Culture OC with a list of 10 cultural centers, theaters and other facilities in the U.S. and Canada created and operated to showcase the cultural and artistic achievements of Asian and Indigenous peoples, listed here by U.S. West Coast, U.S. East Coast and Canada.
U.S. West Coast
Aratani Theatre (Japanese American Cultural & Community Center), Los Angeles
The 800-seat Aratani Theatre has been a cultural pillar of Little Tokyo since opening in 1983, its website referring to it as “the epicenter of Japanese and Japanese American performing arts” in Southern California, including chamber music, dance and drama. Its use of community programs showcases the diverse cultures not just of the region, but beyond it.
Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, San Francisco
APICC proudly presents the annual United States of Asian America Festival (USAAF), showcasing diverse artistic works in music, dance, film, visual art and more from API artists throughout San Francisco. The Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center’s (APICC) mission is to support and present multidisciplinary art reflective of the unique experiences of Asian Pacific Islanders living in the United States.
Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Oakland
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center was founded in 1984 by a coalition of volunteers who recognized the need for a strong artistic and cultural force in the Chinatown area. Opening its own facility in 1996 in the heart of Oakland’s Chinatown district, it presents performances, workshops, festivals, school tours, classes, and exhibitions, using arts and cultural programs to build vibrancy throughout Asian and Pacific Islander communities.
Chinese Performing Arts of America (CPAA), San Jose
Founded in Silicon Valley, as a nonprofit organization since 1991, the mission of Chinese Performing Arts of America is to promote the arts and culture of Chinese and other communities of color through performing arts presentations, arts learning, and community-building services at our CPAA Arts Center and various venues throughout the Bay Area.
American Asian Performing Arts Theater, Bellevue, Washington
The American Asian Performing Arts Theatre (AAPAT) was created with goals to expand and exchange arts and culture between America and China. AAPAT’s mission is to promote the unique – yet, universal – appeal of all Chinese arts and culture, expressed through the performing arts.
U.S. East Coast
Asian American Arts Centre, New York, NY
The Asian American Arts Centre was founded in 1974 as the Asian American Dance Theatre in New York City to address the distinctive concerns of Asian Americans in the United States.
New York Chinese Cultural Center, New York, NY
Founded in 1974, the nonprofit cultural and educational institution New York Chinese Cultural Center is dedicated to deepening the understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture through the arts. It offers professional classes, workshops, and performances while nurturing creative and innovative new works through artist residency programs that reflect today’s rich cultural heritages and diverse communities.
Pao Arts Center, Boston, Massachusetts
This organization aims to celebrate and strengthen the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community of Chinatown and greater Boston through access to culturally relevant art, education and creative programs. Its focus is to promote cultural equity for the AAPI community in the face of gentrification within Chinatown and inequitable access to resources that enable cultural agency throughout the area.
Canada
Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
In 1974, James Buller founded the Native Theatre School as a respectful, and supportive space for Indigenous theater and performing artists. The four-week program grew into the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, offering an Indigenous cultural, theater and performance training program dedicated to advancing Indigenous cultural economy and the arts in general; helping mold young talent and professionals; organizing community presentations and workshops; and working closely with alumni to share its learnings and its craft in a culturally appropriate setting.
National Arts Centre (NAC), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The National Arts Centre (NAC) presents, creates, produces, and co-produces performing arts programming in multiple disciplines and streams, including the NAC Orchestra, dance, English, French and Indigenous theater, and dance, popular music and variety. Its goal is to nurture the next generation of audiences and artists from across Canada.
Hsieh said this need for the new project in Irvine addresses the fact that “many leaders don’t even know that three out of four of the world’s Indigenous peoples live in Asia” and underscores the Asian HOF’s mission of “educating the public in Asian and Indigenous peoples.”
More crucially, she notes, the Irvine joint venture with OCMD “will be the country’s first Asian performing arts center focusing on the arts.”
A Match Made in O.C. Heaven
A key figure in this story is Zhang. He is not only founder of Pick Up Stix and on Pacific Symphony’s board of directors, but also helped Freeman to found OC Music and Dance, and is on the Asian Hall of Fame’s board of governors. As such, Zhang is the only person in this saga involved with both OCMD and the Hall of Fame.
Freeman points out that “four months ago we didn’t have this relationship with Asian HOF. It came on very suddenly. Maki had been looking for a home where the Asian HOF could hang photos of honorees and have a place for their events instead of the Biltmore.”
This past Mother’s Day, Freeman relates, Hsieh, through Zhang, “heard about Great Park and was told just enough to say she was ‘gonna go talk’ with us (OCMD).” He said Hsieh came to OCMD “on a Saturday in May or June” and that after a four-hour conference, he and Hsieh “shook hands” on a new partnership.
Charlie Zhang: From Communist China to the American Dream
The newly formed joint venture between OC Music and Dance and Asian Hall of Fame wouldn’t likely have come into being without the presence, effort and foresight of Charlie Zhang.
Zhang’s personal story is even more compelling than his role in bringing together OCMD’s Doug Freeman and Asian HOF’s Maki Hsieh. He grew up in Shanghai, China, under a Communist regime that imprisoned his father for 20 years for, as Zhang says, “not fully cooperating with the Communist system.”
Zhang, his mother and eight siblings struggled to survive, and from age 17 to 24, Zhang dug trenches and seeded soil in rice paddies. His one passion, and his only form of escape, was music, which he created by playing his brother’s old clarinet. Zhang said he would comfort himself by playing “the classical Western music you weren’t allowed to play.”
A stroke of good fortune led Zhang to Southern California when he was offered a scholarship to a music academy on Wilshire Boulevard and an uncle living in the U.S. covered his airfare.
He arrived in the U.S. with his prized clarinet and $20 in his pocket. While attending music school he worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant and, at night, at a gas station. A restaurant accident that severely injured a finger ended his dream of becoming a musician.
Instead, Zhang and a partner scraped together sufficient funds to start Shanghai Charlie’s restaurant in San Juan Capistrano.
In 1989, Zhang came to the realization that most of his customers wanted their Chinese food as take-out, not to dine in. So he launched his second restaurant, Pick Up Stix, which catapulted him into upper economic echelons.
A constant in his life, Zhang’s passion for music led him to become a board member for Pacific Symphony, where he met fellow board member Doug Freeman.
Based on his own life and experiences, Zhang was determined that no child should be forced to give up the dream of learning and performing music due to lack of financial resources – so, in 2016, he and Freeman founded OC Music and Dance, which offers enrollment even to those children whose families are unable to pay.
Zhang even donated an office building in Irvine, which provided the new school a brick-and-mortar space where budding Orange County musicians and dancers could learn and ply their craft. And when the school outgrew the venue, Zhang introduced Freeman to Maki Hsieh, head of the Pasadena-based Asian Hall of Fame – yet another arts organization where Zhang serves on the board of directors.
Someone who had seen so much of his early promise yanked away by circumstance had carved a way for countless others to have a chance to succeed and realize their dreams in the world of the arts.
Hsieh and Freeman each told Culture OC they feel incredible gratitude at having connected.
Hsieh said “honoring this range of individuals is incredible. …(OCMD) has the ability to organize a ton of events. We’re really lucky because their model fits our model – something multicultural that can generate a lot of activity in our new venue.”
Freeman said, “We couldn’t have found a more synergistic partner to help us complete our performing arts campus. They’re focusing on Asian and Indigenous peoples, which includes communities like the Native Americans, Canadians, those of Greenland, the Inuit and the Yupik people, typically referred to as ‘Eskimos.’”
Why Irvine?
The Hall of Fame press release notes without much fanfare that “Irvine is known as a start-up incubator” and, as previously stated, is the city with the fifth-largest Asian population in the U.S.
Comments by OCMD’s Freeman underscore these crucial points: “The city offered us 2.2 acres for $1 for next 75 years – a 50-year lease and five five-year options – and the city will develop all the land around it.”
Irvine ranks fifth in top ten U.S. cities with highest Asian or Asian American population
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, these 10 cities rank the highest in terms of total population of 100,000 or more and highest percentage of Asians or Asian-Americans. Numbers 2 through 10 are in California, two of which are in Orange County, with Irvine ranked at number five:
1. Honolulu, Hawaii
2. Daly City
3. Fremont
4. Sunnyvale
5. Irvine
6. Santa Clara
7. Garden Grove
8. Torrance
9. San Francisco
10. San Jose
Irvine, he said, “is spending $91 million to clean up the Cultural Terrace” at Great Park – steps that include environmental mitigation that will be completed “by the time they turn land over to us in January of next year.”
“It’s a gift from God,” Freeman said. “You’d be hard pressed to find anything in the U.S. where a city, a municipality, has offered that kind of an environment for that kind of cost.”
Pete Carmichael, assistant city manager for Irvine and head of the project for the city, explained the underlying reasons for providing OCMD so generous a plan. Irvine “is trying to build a great public park for the next 300 years,” Carmichael said. “We need to bring in great nonprofits that offer all kinds of culture, benefits and services that the city can’t offer.”
“OCMD is a great example: It has a huge following and will provide wonderful contributions running and operating the building and programs for generations. Providing the land was a worthwhile contribution to that.”
The arrangements and partnerships are, Carmichael said, “something not unlike Exposition Park in Los Angeles: A campus and museums, all in one geographical area” – in Irvine’s case, “four institutions (including OCMD) all offering something different and that are complementary. Each of four non-profits – OCMD, Pretend City, the Flying Leathernecks Aviation Museum, and the Asian-American Heritage Museum – are getting a land contribution by the city.” He noted that the latter is not the same organization as the Asian Hall of Fame that’s the subject of this article but, rather, a newly formed, Orange County-based entity that needed a leg up from Irvine.
What the Venue Will Provide
Freeman and OCMD are working with the Irvine-based design and build organization Canfield Partners. “They bring in architects, engineers, all the trades, then they construct the building,” Freeman said. “The value of that is mind-blowing.”
“Our hypothetical budget is $40 million. Canfield is designing the building from the inside out in a way that addresses OCMD’s special requirements – aspects such as the sound, lighting and the nature of the flooring needed for both the music and dance programs.”
Freeman notes that up until now, OC Music and Dance’s students have had anything but “the perfect environment” in terms of the facilities needed to learn, rehearse and perform music and dance.
So you can understand his tendency to burst with enthusiasm when describing what the new multimillion-dollar venue will have to offer current and future students.
Freeman said the new, specially designed 800-seat multi-purpose venue is “the jewel in our new campus” that offers flexible acoustics and seating.
“The seating is all retractable,” with 500 seats on the floor and “close to 300” on the mezzanine. OCMD’s site lists some of the new venue’s features, including 16 practice rooms, state-of-the-art dance studios, a “versatile” black box theater, an upstairs café and lounge seating, conference rooms, and a professional recording studio.
Hsieh states that the Asian Hall of Fame plans to bring a considerable level of “avant garde digital media tech angle” to Irvine, a city, she notes, which “already has a lot of wonderful arts and culture but, we believe, room for more art.”
The Asian Hall of Fame’s June 5 release states that “the world-class concert hall will be a permanent home for the Asian Hall of Fame and its cross-cultural content. It will host community and student performances in music, dance and theatre. Year-round shows also feature members of The Doors, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and other Asian Hall of Fame Goodwill Ambassadors.”
Knocking On the Door
The Hall of Fame release says the new venue “will cost approximately $15 million.” As the Asian Hall of Fame is providing $8 million, it has earned naming rights for what the release calls the Asian Hall of Fame Performing Arts Center.
With the benefit of three months having passed since Hall of Fame’s press release, Freeman relates projected costs exceeding three times that sum: “We need about $48 to $50 million.”
Freeman said amounts in hand total out to between $20 and $22 million, including Asian Hall of Fame’s $8 million, OCMD’s existing campus, and various amounts that have been pledged.
That leaves roughly $30 million. Freeman said “my only job these days” is to raise that sum.
As CEO of OCMD, he has “turned over running the school to others. My entire focus is the design and construction of the building and raising money to get there.”
He’s “looking at 18 months from now” to have the entire sum. “We’ll have bridge funding to cover us. We won’t take on long-term debt – unusual, I know. We’ll pay off our building costs within five years. Financial institutions are providing the draw-down: As we raise the funds, we pay down the debt.”
Freeman said Irvine “has committed to completing the preparation of the pad on which OCMD’s building will be built by the end of this year. We anticipate starting construction in January or February of 2025 and completing the venue by late 2027.”
Douglas Freeman, quoted in this story, is a member of the advisory board for Culture OC.
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