Funding makes the difference on Hollywood Boulevard strip. (Spotlight in Thai Town).

NEAR the western end of an eight-block strip of Hollywood Boulevard, the shiny new Hollywest Promenade complex anchors a massive redevelopment effort.

But from there to the neighborhood's eastern edge at Normandie Avenue, tiny storefront restaurants and shops starve for attention amid the vacant lots, abandoned buildings and graffiti.

The difference between the two? Redevelopment money.

Hollywest sits where the Western Avenue Corridor, a Community Redevelopment Agency-sponsored project, intersects with Hollywood Boulevard. Elsewhere in Hollywood's Thai Town, merchants must spur improvements themselves.

"Change will happen very slowly," said Tony Salazar, president of West Coast operations for developer McCormack Baron Salazar Inc.

The firm is developing a mixed-use project at the Hollywood-Western MTA station, with 59 affordable housing units, a day-care center and shops.

"They just don't have enough money to do all that on their own -- get lots acquired and buildings renovated, have streets repaired," Salazar said.

In Thai Town -- the first, and since 1999 the only officially designated Thai Town in the country -- merchants are trying to band together while awaiting $500,000 in CRA funding that's been proposed but hasn't yet made it through the budgeting process.

The Thai Community Development Center is spearheading an effort to create a Thai Town Gateway featuring pagodas at each end of the strip and angel sculptures at major intersections. Individual donors would fund it with help from the Royal Thai Consulate General.

Som Chai, owner of Palms Thai, between Western and Normandie, encourages local business owners to make their own improvements rather than wait for the city.

"We talk about crime and graffiti," said Chai, who is president of the Thai Town Merchant's Association. "I tell (merchants) to call the city and they will clean it off. Or clean up your own storefront. Hire your own 24-hour security people."

While Thai Town didn't receive an official city designation until five years ago, it's been a nexus for Thai-American activity since the first wave of immigrants began arriving in the late 1950s.

"Hollywood was a famous name in Thailand -- it had cachet," explained Chanchanit Martorell, executive director of the Thai CDC, which works to spur economic development in the area.

This group sought to acquire additional skills in the U.S. before going back home, Martorell said. They moved into an apartment-rich area that got built up in the late 1920s to accommodate growing numbers of young, mostly single movie studio employees.

By the 1960s, a new group of Thai students came to study at USC and UCLA. "They worked their ways through school and many stayed to open businesses -- the city's first Thai restaurants' Martorell said.

Since the late 1970s, Thai immigrants have tended to be poorer and less educated. Other groups have shaped the area as well, with Census figures showing that almost half the population is Latino. Only 2.1 percent are Thai.

As Thai Town's original residents aged or traded up, the area began to decline.

Some diversification occurs as new residents move into housing developments on Western. The rest, merchants hope, will come from tourists.

"We're still a part of the Hollywood tourist tradition," said Armen Mkhsian, owner of Little Paris House of Clothing and Gifts, who invested $50,000 to improve the facade of his shop on Hollywood Boulevard.

"But in order to attract tourists and others we have to have not just restaurants, but other unique businesses so people come to do mote than just eat," he said.

Parking is another problem.

"It's almost impossible to park in Thai Town," said Chana Miencharoen, a deputy with the Thai Consulate. "You drive around for an hour to run a 20-minute errand."

Merchants are eyeing some vacant lots in hopes they can be converted into lots. Chai would like to see the city do this, but understands that it's unlikely. "City money goes to the Hollywood side," he said.