It's raw, concrete space for now, blank as unpainted gypsum walls, but Manilatown, a Filipino community center that's under construction in San Francisco, has found unexpected resonance with a large immigrant community that's long struggled with identity.

``We're proud of what we are, damn it!'' declared Delia Ho, a well-known, retired public nurse from San Jose, one of many Bay Area Filipino-American community leaders rallying behind Manilatown.

Energized by a $500,000 donation from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Filipino-Americans in the South Bay are raising funds and support for Manilatown Center, named after an old immigrant enclave in the city's Chinatown.

Filipino-Americans are staking a claim on a corner of Asian-American history, and embracing a place to call their own, Ho said.

``We have Japantown, Koreatown, Chinatown. Why shouldn't we have a Manilatown?'' asked Ho, a community leader who emigrated from the Philippines in 1980. Filipinos were taught early on that their duty was to get along with people, she said, and they immersed themselves in American culture so thoroughly that they failed to preserve their identity.

``We're in dire need of a focal point,'' said Ho, ``a center that would help bring us together as a real community.''

At a one-night gathering in San Jose last month hosted by the Santa Clara County Filipino American Chamber of Commerce, community leaders from the Bay Area raised $20,000 in pledges toward $1 million needed to build and operate the new center, which is to open in August.

Quickly, foundation pledges surpassed $200,000 from individuals and corporate donors, to be added to the half-million-dollar challenge grant from angel investor Dado Banatao that lit a fire of community enthusiasm for the project.

``Now that I'm a grandmother, I want to be able to take my children to Manilatown and teach them about our history and who we are,'' said Maria Banatao, who attended the San Jose event to represent her husband, Dado. As managing partner of Tallwood Venture Capital of Palo Alto, Banatao is the project's main backer.

Past incarnation

The original Manilatown was a 10-block area bordering San Francisco's Chinatown that served as a community and gathering spot for elderly Filipino immigrants who had come in the early 1900s to work in fields in Salinas, Watsonville, Stockton and Delano.

They were called the ``manongs,'' a term of respect for elderly men in the Ilocano dialect.

Most of the tenement buildings and shops in the original Manilatown of old were torn down in the development mania of the 1960s, but one building remained: the International Hotel, a modest, three-story brick building built in 1906, and home to the manongs and some Chinese seniors.

In 1977, after almost nine years of court battles and community protests, the manongs were evicted from the I-Hotel and the event became a kind of civil rights struggle that galvanized Filipinos and other Asian-Americans. Thousands protested to block the eviction.

Two years later the hotel was torn down. A vacant lot remained for 25 years while former tenants and community activists fought to reclaim their piece of history. Eventually, a group of non-profit organizations, including the Kearny Street Housing Corp. and the Archdiocese of San Francisco, bought the property from its Thai owner.

That group, now called International Hotel Senior Housing Inc., obtained a multimillion-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is completing a 17-story building that will house 104 units for low-income seniors.

Manilatown Center will be its centerpiece.

Generations of support

The new project is resonating within the large immigrant community with more than a century of Bay Area history. Filipinos in the 10-county metropolitan area make up 5 percent of the population, or 323,000. Santa Clara County has 76,000 Filipino-Americans, more than any other Bay Area county.

Bill Sorros, vice president of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, the non-profit group founded in 1994, credits the Banataos for providing not just the financial boost for Manilatown, but an important opportunity -- wide Filipino community participation in rebuilding a longtime dream.

``I think there is a kind of critical mass being reached in the Filipino-American community,'' Sorros said. ``There's a better consciousness for philanthropy and giving back.''

Returning home

Manilatown will be housed in a 2,400-square-foot space on the first floor of the new International Hotel Senior Housing building.

The August opening will mark the 28th anniversary of the eviction of the manongs. The new Manilatown will function as a community center, an exhibition hall and a living historical homage to the manongs in the form of photos, films, art and lectures. Window panels will be etched with old photos of manongs from the original I-Hotel. A ``Legacy Wall'' will bear the names of donors, inscribed on glass panels over a wall of bricks from the old hotel.

As in the original I-Hotel, a rooftop garden will crown the 17-story building, where seniors can tend their plants.

``It's the manongs who paved the way for us to have a better life,'' said Filipinas Magazine publisher Mona Lisa Yuchengco, who arranged the meeting between the Banataos and Emil De Guzman, president of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and a former tenant of the I-Hotel.

``For me, the significance of this center is its history,'' said Yuchengco, who immigrated in 1982. ``That's my personal interest and having this legacy passed on to our children.''

The powerful symbolism of Manilatown is drawing Filipino-Americans like Tess Crescini, a San Jose real estate agent, to help raise funds for the project. Crescini is president-elect of the Filipino American Real Estate Professional Association, based in Milpitas, a group that has donated $1,000 to Manilatown.

Crescini was 13 when she and her father arrived in California in 1969. That year, developers announced plans to tear down the I-Hotel and make way for a parking lot.

Working in the farm fields in Stockton, sometimes translating for the manongs there, Crescini heard her first stories about the I-Hotel.

``I was too young to be politically aware,'' said Crescini, who has donated to the project and urged others to do the same. ``But I understood that manongs were being kicked out. I talked about this with my Chinese friends and we felt kind of helpless.''

Crescini was attending San Jose State University by the time the tenants of the I-Hotel were evicted in 1977. She believes the story of the I-Hotel, the middle-of-the-night eviction of old immigrants, is a story of an injustice that resonates with Filipino-Americans everywhere.

``I came to this country with a lot of idealism,'' she said. ``The I-Hotel thing made me wonder as a kid, `How come we're not being treated fairly?' ''

De Guzman, photographed struggling with a San Francisco policeman during the 1977 eviction, said it took a generation to answer the question posed by a younger Crescini.

Said De Guzman, ``The time has come for Manilatown.''