This was the story that have been around for a long time.
Frank Jao is a prominent Asian American businessman in Southern California. He was born in Haiphong, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese father and ethnic Chinese mother. His family was from northern Vietnam but moved to Saigon when the country was divided into communist North Vietnam and democratic and capitalist South Vietnam in 1954.
Jao fled Vietnam in 1975 and came to the United States; he took real estate classes at Coastline Community College in Westminster, California, and went on to found Bridgecreek Development, the biggest real estate developer in the Vietnamese American enclave of Little Saigon in Orange County, California. He developed and currently owns the highly-popular Asian Garden Mall on Bolsa Avenue, which houses numerous Vietnamese shops. Aside from his business activities, Jao serves in various non-profit capacities as well. In 2005, he was appointed by George W. Bush as head of the Vietnam Education Foundation, which seeks to improve relations between the United States and Vietnam. The Le-Jao Center at his alma mater Coastline Community College is named in recognition of donations by Jao and Chieu Le, the entrepreneur and owner of the Lee?s Sandwich chain in California. He is a resident of Huntington Beach, California.
He developed 2 projects in Little Saigon on Bolsa across from each other during the mid 80s. Both Asian Village and Garden were huge success in the Vietnamese community. During the construction with Asian Garden he worded the contract agreement with the sub contractors the completion dates of construction or penalty would be to compesate the developer for loss of all future leasing revenues. The building was completed a month late and many contractors were sue over $10m for the lost rent revenue.
He claimed that many interested merchants left because the spaces were not finished and the potential loss were 20 years lease agreements that he was not able to expedite due to the incompletion of the building. The top merchants went else where and he was struggling with current mom and pop operations that not only damaged the brand as well as lowering the value of his property.
The contractors did not have the financial resources to battle him in court and they agreed to not charge him for the construction of the building. The contractor never bothered to complete the last 10% of the work and this was the reason why the cosmetic finishes were really bad.
The entire second floor has only the front stairs but no back stairs and only an escalator was located at the back. It did not meet code by not having a rear exit stairs and an only going upward bound escalator did not qualify as a stairs even when it was shut off to serve as an emergency exit.
Sources also mentioned building officials were well compensated to look the other way lasted several years without mandating a rear stairs. Finally a bandaged rear stairs was added awkwardly toward the rear of the building.
He volunteered his time at the City of Westminster council to benefit his developments.
Many of his unsuccessful smaller strip centers often were mysteriously burned to the ground.