For many Vietnamese Americans in Virginia, the Eden Center represents home. Now they fear that home will be taken away from them and they are speaking up.
“It’s like my country,” Suong Nguyen said to WUSA9 about the shopping complex and cultural hub. “I can smell, I can see the Vietnamese people every day.”
It was only in the 1980s that Little Saigon in Arlington had that same sense of community. Redevelopment forced many people and businesses out of the area and the Eden Center became the central headquarters for Vietnamese cultural activities.
Now many fear history could repeat itself.
Word began spreading this year that the city was pushing for new redevelopment in the area surrounding the Eden Center. Merchants fear that will push rents up, forcing them out of their community.
Much of the planning and the public hearings about the redevelopment have been done without input from the Vietnamese American community.
Groups like the Viet Place Collective are now organizing merchants to make sure their input is considered before any plans go forward.
“What we have given ourselves the duty to do is to inform Eden’s business owners and workers, as well as the greater community, that they do indeed have a voice in it,” says Quỳnh Nguyễn to DCist.com.
The city now acknowledges it needed to do a better job of outreach. It’s also denying it has any plans to push anyone out.
“It’s a place that people call home and it’s very important to the Vietnamese community. And so we’ve been clear in the planning language from the start that we want to hold on to the buildings, we want to hold on to the culture, and we want to make sure that the sort of tools are in place, that that place can continue to thrive going into the future,” said city planner Paul Stoddard.
Some in the community are skeptical.
“This will impact everyone,” Suong Nguyen said. I was shocked.
“It would impact the businesses and the Vietnamese community most and yet they’re not there to represent themselves,” Denise Nguyen said to WUSA.
Stoddard says the goal is to consider what is already working and what the city can do in the next 20 to 30 years to support that.
“The Falls Church intention is that Eden Center will be there long term, so the plan needs to show how it’s going to support that,” Stoddard said.
The merchants are vowing to make sure that happens.
“I’m just a small one in our community, but we should rally as one. United, we will be bigger. This the main thing: we need the people to speak out,” says Hung Hoang, the owner of Hoàng Thỏ II, said to DCist.
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