Lowell hopes to put ‘Little Cambodia’ on the map

Chi Kong (left) and Vong Choum said a blessing last month before a meal at Lowell’s Glory Buddhist Temple. (Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe)

Campaign would promote ethnic quarter as tourist destination

February 15, 2010
By Sarah Schweitzer
Boston Globe Staff

LOWELL - In this city, long a magnet for immigrants, the Cambodian neighborhood has been just one more ethnic quarter, a place where, like the Irish and Dominicans before them, Cambodians labored to navigate the ways of American life.

But with Lowell’s Cambodians numbering more than 20,000, the second-largest Cambodian population in the United States after Long Beach, Calif., city officials have begun to wonder whether they are overlooking a cultural commodity. Working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the city is exploring ways to make the neighborhood a tourist destination, mimicking the successes of Boston’s North End and Chinatown.

“When you think of Boston’s North End, it’s known, you get that feeling of another world. You get that when you go into Chinatown,’’ said Bernie Lynch, Lowell’s city manager. “The same could be done here.’’

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