Does closing-time ordinance hit Chinese takeout places too hard?

Zhong Gul Yang, 64, has owned the Chinese takeout restaurant Fu-Hing on West Erie Avenue for the past 16 years, but these days, he's looking to sell his North Philadelphia business and leave the city that for more than 25 years he's called home.

The restaurant is barely staying afloat, and he can no longer handle the pressure.

For Yang, the trouble started in 2005, when the city passed an ordinance preventing commercial establishments, particularly takeout restaurants, from staying open after 11 p.m. in residential areas.

These stores were becoming a "haven for drug activity and crime," the ordinance stated, and closing them earlier was an attempt to make vulnerable neighborhoods safer.

The ordinance hit Yang in the cash register: his busiest hours were between midnight and 2 a.m.

Soon he had to let employees go. Now, as he's losing money but unable to sell the restaurant, he feels stuck.

Yang is a member of the Greater Philadelphia Chinese Restaurant Association, which formed after the ordinance was passed and has since grown to include more than 300 Chinese restaurant owners. The group has been lobbying to have the restrictions lifted, and the association's president Yingzhang Lin hopes eleven years later, stories like Yang's can show how the ordinance has been harmful.

Lin, owner of a financial advisory company, said he became involved to help advocate for restaurant owners, often newer immigrants who aren't fluent in English.

"It's been so difficult; I don't know what to do," Yang said in Mandarin in Lin's Chinatown office.

Yang, who made a living as a farmer before coming to the United States in 1990, said he feels the ordinance makes him another victim of the community's crime problem, and he wonders why the 24-hour gas station across the street from him can stay open.

City Councilman David Oh is working on an amendment to the ordinance, which he said needs to be applied more fairly. It "seems like scapegoating," he said.

He argues that takeout restaurants are disproportionately affected by the ordinance.

"If you want to close stores, then close them all, in which case you will hear from the pizza place and the other businesses and from the community and their supporters," he said. "It's just that Chinese takeout restaurants typically are run by people with less voice within the community."

Lt. John Stanford, spokesman for the Philadelphia Police Department, said takeout restaurants turn out to be magnets for crimes because of their late hours and great numbers. He said he had no statistics about crimes at takeout restaurants readily available.

They "give people perpetuating crime a place to hang out, a place to set up shop, [and] that can lead to someone being robbed, someone getting shot," he said.

"If you talk to people in these neighborhoods, they'll tell you, Chinese takeout restaurants in the neighborhood makes the neighborhood take a turn for the worse."

Concerns from community groups helped prompt the ordinance's passage, and 11 years later, it seems those concerns still stand.

"On weekend nights, you will see youths standing out front these places, and the majority of the time, trouble breaks out of that," said Kayzar Abdul Kabir of the Cobbs Creek-based community organization Muslims for Humanity.

"These are neighborhoods with high unemployment, high poverty - do you really want a place to be open all night long with all that going on?"

Charles Lanier, lifelong North Philadelphia resident and executive director of the Hunting Park Neighborhood Advisory Committee, agreed.

"Those are just the customers these places are attracting," he said. "So if you're a business, and opening late is prone to causing problems, you need to respect the community."

Stanford said the law has been effective from a crime-prevention standpoint.

"If you look at a location that's had a number of shootings or other incidents, you see that go down when the store is closed," he noted.

But restaurant owners still feel targeted. Lian Fang Huang, 36, who owns the Jade Garden on West Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia, didn't know about the ordinance when he opened his restaurant in February 2015.

Huang, who emigrated from China in 2005 and spent 10 years working at restaurants all over the country, still has a hard time understanding why he's forced to close early. He didn't have to in other cities.

Lin thinks focus should be placed on making neighborhoods safer in other ways, noting that the Chinese Restaurant Association has held crime-prevention seminars to help owners better cooperate with police and enhance lighting in stores.

Restaurant owners don't enjoy staying open late, he said, but it's what they must do to make a living.

"This is not the kind of business where people get rich," he said. "It's the only thing many of these owners know how to do."

jchadha@phillynews.com

215-854-2771 @JanakiChadha