File:Cambodia Town Founding Members of Long Beach, California.jpg

English: CAMBODIA TOWN OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA

The city of Long Beach has the largest population of Cambodian Americans living in the United Sates. For them, Long Beach is their home away from Cambodia and the number of Cambodian Americans keep growing over the years. Many of them are business owners, such as donut shops, restaurants, jewelry stores, grocery stores, supermarkets, barber and coiffure shops, wedding dress stores, clothing stores, car dealerships, auto garage mechanic shops, and many more. Most these businesses are found along the Anaheim Street, but on smaller streets as well. The contribution of Cambodia Americans to the economic development of Long Beach is undeniable.

It came to the attention of Kenneth T. So and Harrison T. S. Lee, Boeing engineers, that Long Beach lacked a landmark to celebrate the heritage of the Cambodian Americans new emigrants to the United States who had contributed greatly for the development and betterment of the city. In 2001, Mr. So and Mr. Lee met to discuss the creation of Cambodia Town as a landmark in Long Beach. Both of them were committed to get this project moving. They knew they needed to recruit more people to make this project to come to fruition. They set out to call people to join them to form a task force, which they named “Cambodia Town Initiative Task Force (CTITF).” They recruited eight more people to join them to form the ten-founding member of Cambodia Town. The tasks were divided into five categories, namely Proposal, Administration, Public Relations, Legal, and Finance. The ten founding members of Cambodia Town were in charge of the following tasks:

1. Kenneth T. SO, Proposal Lead; Pasin CHANOU, Proposal 2. Harrison T. S. LEE, Administration Lead; Rosana CHANOU, Administration 3. David KAR, Public Relation Lead; Morakod LIM, Public Relations; Annie H. LEE, Public Relations 4. Solange KEA, Legal Lead 5. Philip T. THONG, Finance Lead; Sovuthy TITH, Finance

The ten members met weekly at the office of Attorney Solange Kea to brainstorm on the direction of the project. The team knew that it needed the community to get involved for the project to be successful. Many town hall meetings were conducted to inform on the progress of the project. Kenneth T. So concentrated in writing the proposal, as well as helping the rest of the members to perform their important duties, such as performing public relations with the community; informing and convincing people of the importance of having Cambodia Town as a landmark in the city; collecting signatures; having public events; conducting interviews with the local press; scheduling town hall meeting to inform the community on the progress of the project; getting business shop owners to support the project; and encouraging the community to get involved.

The proposal for Cambodia Town was submitted to the Long Beach City Hall on 7 March 2002. On 3 July 2007, the Long Beach City Council officially approved Cambodia Town as a landmark in Long Beach.