LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A decades-long dream for Las Vegas to have its own “Filipino Town” pushes forward, as Clark County considers an application for a cultural corridor.
Long-time community leader Rozita Lee personally wrote and submitted the application to Clark County. FOX5 met with Lee Thursday as she celebrates a remarkable milestone, that day: turning 90-years-old.
“There’s a season for everything. This is the season for Filipino Town,” Lee said. “This is my time of being 90 to continue the work that I do with the community,” she said.
The corridor would start at Flamingo Avenue at Maryland Parkway: the epicenter of numerous Filipino-owned stores and businesses — and extend north to Desert Inn.
There are an estimated 200,000 Filipinos across Nevada, with the majority in the Las Vegas Valley.
Lee recalls how the Valley and the Filipino population has grown since the 1970s, when she first moved to Las Vegas. She helped numerous stores and businesses move to the Maryland Parkway area.
“A lot of Filipinos lived around here and were working in the casinos, so they lived close by. It has grown,” Lee said.
“Filipinos contribute so much to this community. We have doctors, lawyers, teachers, the nurses, the entertainers on the Strip…They will feel so proud because they are recognized,” Lee said.
Lee has decades of civic service and community activism, including serving as Special Assistant to Nevada Governor Bob Miller, President Barack Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and vice chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations. She even has a street named after her in the Southwest Valley in the Uncommons shopping area: Rozita Lee Avenue.
Tuesday, the Clark County Commission will direct staff to move the process forward. After two board votes, the proposal will head to a neighborhood hearing.
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