Chinatown theater project gets building owners’ backing

Chinatown’s Loew’s Canal theater is on its way to becoming a cultural center that could help revitalize the neighborhood still struggling to recover from Sept. 11. The building’s owners, banker Thomas Sung and his family, have agreed to launch feasibility studies for a development project that would create a performing arts center in the long-closed 2,300 theater on the corner of Ludlow Street, built in 1926. The project is being pushed by the Committee to Revitalize and Enrich the Arts and Tomorrow’s Economy, an Asian-American non-profit, which envisions a “town square, with a store, a visitors’ bureau, theaters, a café and rehearsal spaces,” said Amy Chin, the group’s president. With the backing of the Sung family, her vision is closer to becoming a reality. Chin’s group already received $150,000 in grants to study the project after Sept. 11 from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., and has allowance of another $140,000 for additional plans for Loew’s. [Post]