Chan Hua’s grandparents lost a hog and farm operation to Communist China. His parents lost a construction company in Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge. And now, Hua fears he’s about to lose his Chinese restaurant to the city of Lincoln.

The city wants to demolish his family’s Taste of China Chinese Restaurant in downtown Lincoln __ a spartan hole in the wall at 14th and Q streets where you can get lunch, soup, rice and an egg roll for about $5.

His restaurant is in the way of Mayor Coleen Seng’s plan to build a six-story parking garage topped by a high-rise that she hopes will invigorate the area. The city has already reached an agreement to buy the Japanese restaurant just south of him and the Star Ship 9 discount theater to the west.

Businesses on the other end of the block would be left alone. So now only Hua stands in the way.

The Urban Development Department has been negotiating with Hua for about six months, but the two sides are at a stalemate. Hua doesn’t want to move, but if he must, he wants the city to find him a suitable replacement building. Since that hasn’t happened yet, he says it proves there is nothing in the price range they’re offering him for his building.

The city has offered $240,000 for his building and its fixtures. Hua says he paid almost $290,000 for the building two years ago, when his landlord gave him a good deal after he rented the place for 13 years.

Hua’s real estate agent, Steve Guittar, said the city’s offer is “absurdly low” and that they’ve looked at everything on the market between $200,000 and $600,000, to no avail. The city sent a list of possible properties, most of which cost a half million dollars, Hua said. He’d have to close his business at that price, he said.

The very thought of closing leaves him speechless as he chokes off tears.

The Taste of China isn’t just a business to him and his family. He and his brother, San, co-own the building, and the business is owned by the family. Five family members work in the restaurant, and he fears what would happen if he had to close it: Not just the disintegration of a business, but perhaps a family.

It’s not about money, he said. The restaurant doesn’t make much; it’s something his family built together and it’s a tie that binds them.

Hua and his brothers started out working on the lowest rungs of another Chinese restaurant in Lincoln and eventually saved enough to open their own place.

His brother San manages the restaurant six days a week, putting in 11-hour days. Chan lives and works in Omaha as a software engineer and drives to Lincoln on weekends to give his brother a break.

His wife sometimes asks why he makes the trek to Lincoln every weekend. It’s hard to explain.

The restaurant means a lot to Hua’s mother, and his mother means a lot to Hua. They bonded when his family was separated in Cambodia and only he was allowed to stay with his parents.

He said his family was among Phnom Penh’s 2 million residents forced at gunpoint to evacuate the city on foot into the country, where they were forced into slave labor in Pol Pot’s “killing fields.”

There, an estimated one-quarter of Cambodia’s population was worked to death, starved or executed during Pol Pot’s attempt to form a Communist peasant farming society from 1975 to 1979. Hua said his father died of starvation in 1977.

Hua was just a boy during the genocide, but he has vivid memories of nearly starving, being forced to bury children, foraging for anything edible, catching fish with his bare hands, translating for refugees in a mental hospital, subsisting on two tablespoons of rice per day.

After the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1978, the family was reunited and began a small business. They saved everything they had to pay someone to help escape to Thailand.

From there, they made their way to the United States on Nov. 29, 1985, and started over in Lincoln.

Every generation has lost something precious to the government, he said.

“I feel I create this thing,” he said. “You don’t want to give up something you have. … This is the only thing we owned in all life.”

It reminds him of the soldiers who, if they spotted anything of value on a peasant, would ask if they could borrow it.

“And you knew, it will never return,” Hua says. “It’s not much different now, except they have to pay.”

Hua said he’s never lost more sleep than in the past six months.

“This thing, to me, to my family, it’s been hell,” he said. “It’s almost like you’re being hunted.”

Hua hoped he could persuade the mayor to spare his business during a December meeting, but he walked away disappointed, even though he told her she’d have to put a gun to his head to get him to give up the business.

“She said, ‘We will progress with our plan,’ ” Hua said. “I’ll never forget that.” He also sent the mayor a letter detailing his family’s history and his attachment to the business. He said she never replied.

Urban Development officials are sympathetic to Hua but resolute.

“Chan’s a very impressive individual,” said Jeff Cole of the Urban Development Department. “We have nothing but the highest regard for Chan and all that he’s been through and … we look forward to continuing to work with him.”

However, city officials seem more determined to buy out Hua’s restaurant than when the project was announced in February. Back then, officials said, demolishing Hua’s restaurant wasn’t crucial but was preferable.

Now Cole says they need the entire northeast corner of the block if they’re going to build anything above the parking garage.

“It’s a very important piece,” Cole said. The city could “drop some kind of pier into the right-of-way and build above it,” he said, but that would be expensive.

Urban Development Director Marc Wullschleger said some of the developers interested in building above the parking garage would prefer that the city buy out the whole northeast corner, including Hua.

“I think the city has some specific developers who are pushing this development,” said Hua’s real estate agent, Guittar.

Cole said negotiations with Hua aren’t over; the Urban Development Department is looking at paying him in the range of a previous offer of $330,000, which expired.

“It’s been a lot of work,” he said. “We feel like that work has not come to an end yet.”

Aside from whatever the city would pay Hua for his building, he can get up to $10,000 in “re-establishment” expenses for new signs and stationery, for example; $2,500 in search expenses and an uncapped amount for moving expenses.

The two sides have also discussed building around the restaurant (an expensive option that the city’s not too interested in), temporarily relocating Hua during construction and then rebuilding in the same location. None of those talks have gone far.

The elephant in the negotiating room is the city’s power to use eminent domain, or condemnation, to take Hua’s property if they can’t reach an agreement. The area was already previously declared blighted, opening the door to condemnation.

Asked whether the city would resort to that, Wullschleger said, “We don’t see that happening. That’s up to the City Council. I don’t think the council has an appetite to use eminent domain. I’m not sure.”

Without condemnation, the city can’t force Hua to move.

Hua and Guittar will plead his case before the City Council today, when it holds a public hearing on redeveloping the downtown block. They will ask that Hua’s corner be spared from the wrecking ball.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.

What's going on?

What’s happening? The owner of the downtown Taste of China restaurant is fighting the city’s attempt to buy his property to make way for a parking garage topped by a high-rise in downtown Lincoln. Owners of the neighboring Wasabi! Japanese restaurant and Star Ship 9 discount theater have agreed to sell their property to the city.

What’s happening today? City Council members will hold a public hearing Monday on whether to solicit developers’ proposals to build housing, offices or a hotel above the parking garage at 14th and Q. The city would also tear down the Douglas 3 theater and build a civic plaza at 13th and P.

Today’s council meeting begins at 1:30 p.m.

What does it mean? The council may have to grapple again with whether to use its condemnation power to take the restaurant if negotiations fail.

What’s next? If the council gives the go-ahead, proposals will be sought by developers and after a few months, the best proposal will be brought back to the council for final approval and possibly a request to use eminent domain.