Refreshing Asian salads
Freeman Ngo and his wife Than Than are opening a more casual spinoff of their Cleveland Heights Pacific East Japanese restaurant at Cedar Center North this fall.
SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- China Gate restaurant is rebuffing rumors that owners colluded with a new Asian restaurant, Pacific East, while fighting another Asian restaurant's move to its Cedar Center North home.
Supporters of China Gate, which has been at Cedar Center North for 50 years, protested for weeks against a proposed Panda Express fast-food restaurant, with a website, petition and group showings at city council meetings.
The day after council made the controversial decision to sell a Cedar Center parcel to a developer planning to build a Panda Express, news surfaced that Pacific East -- a casual spinoff of an independently owned Cleveland Heights restaurant that plans to sell rice and noodle bowls -- would move to Cedar Center.
Now city officials wonder if China Gate's lease required owners to sign off on Pacific East all while protesting Panda Express.
A China Gate protest organizer acting as a spokesman for China Gate owners said no. But he said they opposed Panda Express because it's a national chain with the money to market customers away from China Gate.
Pacific East, said Matt Greminger, is "not nearly as unfair competition as Panda Express, because it's not a big chain. Everyone can put those rumors to rest that China Gate knew [about Pacific East] and had any type of say because they didn't."
Councilwoman Jane Goodman, who in a heated exchange told China Gate owners "get off your a-- and up your game" to compete with Panda Express, wrote a Facebook post speculating whether China Gate had a non-compete clause in their lease that prohibited any other Asian restaurants from moving in the plaza without China Gate's permission.
"What riles me the most is that apparently Panda's rice bowls are too much competition for China Gate but Pac East's rice bowls are not," Goodman wrote. "If they knew all the time that Deville was bringing Pac East in and that they were going to be TWO businesses competing with them, then to raise the hue and cry over the city selling to Panda and to make US the bad guys was just plain wrong."
Greminger said he has seen China Gate's lease and there is a restrictive covenant, but there could be loopholes: China Gate's lease could only apply to Chinese restaurants, but Pacific East is considered Japanese, Greminger said.
While Panda Express developers wanted to ban any new Asian restaurants in and around Cedar Center North, city council struck the language in its deal. But even if council did approve the ban on other Asian-style restaurants, it would have only applied to city-owned property, which does not include the space Pacific East will occupy.
Councilman Marty Gelfand said council didn't have any say in the Pacific East deal.
"This is a private matter," he said. "When we sold the [Panda Express] parcel, that was a different matter. We have no deliberative authority on what goes into the [former] game store. It's not for council to make decisions about."