But as Houston's Asian population continued to grow, many Chinese began to settle in other areas of Houston and Fort Bend County, most notably neighborhoods such as Sharpstown and Alief, and in parts of Sugar Land.

This led to Houston's second Chinatown developing on Houston's Southwest side, and led many of the Asian businesses in the older East Downtown area to close and relocate elsewhere by the 1990s. East Downtown became a strange area that was hard to classify - An odd mix of abandoned warehouses and the old Chinatown, that was different than the true Downtown, as well as the surrounding African American and Hispanic neighborhoods bordering it on other sides.

I remember discovering the area as a teen in the '80s, going to punk rock shows at the legendary "Axiom" music venue and occasionally stopping in to shop in the old Chinatown. The area was not generally considered a great place to be walking around after dark back then, but my friends and I spent a lot of time there despite that reputation. Then Francisco Studios opened, and quickly became one of the main places local Houston bands rented to practice, and a lot of us active in the music scene were drawn to the area to use "The Maggot Colony" as it became known, as a place for our bands to hone their skills. I never really thought that the area would ever change in character anytime in the foreseeable future. It seemed destined to keep its status as a sort of strange wasteland of mixed influences, kept from expanding by being surrounded by other neighborhoods.

But like almost every part of Houston, almost nothing stays the same forever, and changes started to quickly occur in recent years. In 2008, the area's management district decided to rename the neighborhood, and after asking for suggestions, settled on "EaDo", a sometimes criticized choice, and began to work hard at promoting interest and development there. Upscale residential developments began to appear, at first sticking out against the rest of the landscape conspicuously, but it quickly became obvious that the area was redeveloping into a different type of neighborhood.