Fears of Displacement: Vietnamese community fights to preserve Eden Center amidst redevelopment plans
By Duc Minh Ha - 04/21/2023
FALLS CHURCH, Va. — When the City of Falls Church announced a plan to revitalize the area around the largest Vietnamese commercial on the East Coast and home to more than 120 family-owned businesses in November 2021, the community grew uneasy.
Although city officials said they had no plans to demolish Eden Center, a 200,000 square feet strip mall on Wilson Boulevard, store owners and members of the local Vietnamese community have their doubts.
Jenn Tran, a 25-year-old Falls Church native, said the plan could threaten the tight-knit community by driving up rent prices and displacing long-time shop owners at Eden Center. Identified as one of the city’s eight “Planning Opportunity Areas,” the area is noted to benefit from renewed investment, according to the city's website.
“The city wants to see large-scale mixed-use retail and residential built around Eden Center in the area,” Tran said. “That will have an impact on the property value of Eden, therefore impacting the rent prices and then the stability of the Viet community.”
In November 2021, the Falls Church city council presented a redevelopment draft for the East End, which included Eden Center.
Falls Church’s East End Small Area Plan. (City of Falls Church)
According to the city’s draft vision statement, the plan aims to maintain the cultural identity of Eden Center by investing in programming and public art that celebrates Vietnamese American culture. Future development could also lead to transportation investments, green spaces and better housing affordability while rezoning for new commercial and residential development to support economic revitalization, according to the proposal.
“There's less of a focus on that redevelopment and more of a focus on reinvestment and taking a place that's already great and just making it even better,” said Emily Bazemore, a senior planner for the city.
Since the city’s announcement, rumors of the center's demolition a year later raised concerns. In response, a group of second-generation Vietnamese Americans has banded together to advocate for the preservation of the center’s cultural legacy. To some community members, the city fails to fully acknowledge the cultural and economic contributions of the Vietnamese American community around Eden Center.
According to the plan’s economic development chapter, the mall paid the city more than $1.3 million in property, sales and other business tax revenue in 2020. It is also one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations, bringing in thousands of visitors daily.
“The East End small area plan seems to say that the 10-block area around Eden Center is not dense enough and not as economically productive as the city wants,” Tran said. “But to say that it's not as economically vibrant as they want seems to be incredibly dismissive of the contributions of the community to the City of Falls Church.”
Tran said the community’s concerns are not unfounded. In 1984, development displaced the Vietnamese shops in Clarendon when rent prices soared by 500 percent.
To prevent history from repeating itself, Tran and seven other second-generation Vietnamese Americans decided to form a Viet Place Collective to protect their cultural center for shop owners and the 80,000 Vietnamese Americans living in the area.
The collective has taken proactive measures to spread its message by distributing fliers throughout Eden Center and launching an Instagram account, with the aim of raising awareness about its mission to uphold the legacy of one of the oldest and largest Vietnamese communities by empowering multiple generations, according to Denise Nguyen.
A freelance creative marketing consultant and mother, Nguyen remembers going on the three-hour-long “pilgrimage” to Eden Center twice a month growing up. Despite hating the family trips when she was young, the 36-year-old Nguyen now visits Eden Center at least once a week.
Nguyen learned how to cook from her parents, who opened a Vietnamese restaurant in her hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia. Smells of authentic Vietnamese dishes and herbs and spices bought from Eden Center filled her Falls Church home, where she is now passing down family recipes to her seven-year-old daughter.
It is also at Nguyen's house that the small group meets every Thursday to discuss the next advocacy steps.
“[Falls Church] is one of the richest and whitest cities in all of America,” Nguyen said. “And the fact that [Eden Center] generates almost $2 million dollars in tax revenue for this very small, what they call ‘The Little City,’ is pretty impressive.’”
The city was ranked as the wealthiest in Virginia in 2020 by SmartAsset, a financial advice resource, based on three factors: investment income per capita, median home value and per capita income. According to a 2018 U.S. Census Bureau report, it was also the fourth richest area for the 2013 to 2017 period.
“We have a lot of things for Vietnamese people, especially in this area, to be proud of,” Nguyen said. “And we don't want to see that legacy dismantled.”
Nguyen said she wants to preserve this community for her daughter so she can be around other Vietnamese people and learn about her heritage.
“I’m so thrilled because now I'm spending so much time trying to make sure that she embraces her culture as a Vietnamese American,” Nguyen said about her daughter. “It's not just for me now, but also for my daughter so that she better understands who she is.”
Viet Place Collective is primarily made of and for young people within the community who, like Nguyen, want to preserve their culture for themselves and generations to come.
According to Nguyen, the collective has served as a bridge between the community and the people in power, something she considered “not an unfamiliar role for immigrant kids.”
Since its establishment in December 2022, the group has had conversations with Eden Center store owners about their concerns and needs. Tran said the collective has also translated documents and paperwork to help inform the Vietnamese community at Eden Center, many of whom don’t speak English well. The collective’s first goal is to talk and build relationships of trust with Eden Center business owners, she said.
“Local government is a foreign process for basically anyone who doesn't speak English as their first language,” Tran said, adding that the process could be inaccessible to many people. “So we're kind of trying to make all of this information clear to the community and the business owners of how it will impact them.”
Alan Frank, the landlord of Eden Center, has taken steps to address rumors and ease the concerns of business owners by sending emails and distributing flyers. His messages encouraged store renters to participate in the city’s pop-up events, which aim to increase engagement and communication with the Vietnamese community.
According to the city’s website, there are four events, each with an interpreter present. Each event will focus on a theme, like the significance of Eden Center and desired improvements, before revealing the revised plan in the final week.
While criticizing the city for not visiting the area frequently, Nguyen acknowledged its efforts to engage community members through pop-up events over the next eight weeks. She encouraged shop owners and residents to attend these events to gather information about the plan and express their concerns.
“They're planning something,” she said about the city’s pop-up events. “But if you don't come up and learn about it, then you'll never know.”
Given the community’s concerns, the city extended the public outreach period and postponed action on the plan by the city’s Planning Commission and the City Council.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, the city’s Bazemore showed up early to set up a booth by the water fountain amidst the fainting music from the nearby boba store.
Bazemore (center) and her team members answering questions from a community member. (Nate Ha)
As the lead planner for the city, Bazemore was responsible for organizing these events, including printing out flyers in both Vietnamese and English and preparing merchandise like blue frisbee discs and tote bags.
“What would you like to see improved at the Eden Center area,” reads a large sign written in both English and Vietnamese. With her team of mostly recent college graduates, Bazemore would come up to passersby and encourage them to share their thoughts, even with an option to do so anonymously.
But as few people from the community members showed up at the third pop-up event on March 29, 2023, her team decided to go door-to-door and converse with Eden Center business owners instead.
Flyers of frequently asked questions printed in both Vietnamese and English. (Nate Ha)
“Preservation is at the forefront of our minds,” Bazemore said. “There's less of a focus on that redevelopment and more of a focus on reinvestment and taking a place that's already great, and just making it even better.”
As Bazemore explained the plan to passersby, she reflected on how the project had been an evolving process.
“I think that they've done a great job of advocating for the community,” she said, explaining how her team had taken into account all input from the community while drafting the final plan. “Having those conversations has really strengthened our understanding of Eden Center and has been a great learning resource.”
Bazemore said her team had also done independent research and talked to groups like the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network (SBAN) to serve the community better. She said she hopes to share the new draft in May with comments and feedback from the community and have a public action hearing in June.
“As we revise, I hope there's a positive response from the community,” she said.
Bazemore said she planned to use this opportunity to advocate for the city to create a new position for a Vietnamese Outreach Specialist in the city, which was also raised by members of the Viet Place Collective during their interviews.
“For me and my team, having someone like a Vietnamese speaking outreach specialist from the beginning would have been tremendous,” Bazemore said. “It would be a huge benefit to have someone who is familiar with the community, someone who they know and trust and not a completely new person every time. It’s a little bit more difficult to establish trust by using an interpreter.”
Despite efforts made by Bazemore's team, the collective feels the city has not been transparent enough about the plan's impact on the community.
“It means a lot to the community that they're showing up,” said Tran. However, the collective said the city was not doing enough and had failed to communicate inclusively with the Vietnamese community at Eden Center.
“There is a range of business owners' education level[s], there are people who graduated in Vietnam with their master's degrees, and then there are people who are not fully literate,” Tran said, explaining that many of them were older and used limited English. “All of these people are worth getting their opinion, but none of them have the vocabulary in English, no matter their education level in Vietnamese.”
To ensure Eden Center remains Vietnamese, the collective and Eden Center business owners, employees and community members drafted and published a list of demands on April 19, 2023. These include changing the goal from preserving Vietnamese cultural identity to actively not displacing the community, renaming the current Wilson Boulevard to Saigon Boulevard and reinvesting the money Eden Center generates into anti-displacement programs and its infrastructure.
Nguyen said she also wanted the city to call the area Little Saigon East instead of East End.
“We're like imploring the city to think much bigger, as far as what the potential of what this area can be,” Nguyen said, explaining that Eden Center could become a Vietnamese epicenter that serves as a destination for the community. “If you can call this area Little Saigon, it adds that pressure to other businesses to be Vietnamese, or at least East Asian, coming into this area.”
Other demands are increasing the total amount of free parking spaces, ensuring infrastructure improvements and community safety as a requirement of any development plan and commissioning Vietnamese artists for any public art.
Bazemore said she was aware of these demands and planned to incorporate them in the final draft, which is due to be announced on June 2, 2023. Calling the plan “a wish list,” she acknowledged the fears and concerns about displacement while reassuring that it won’t happen.
“A lot of people have said, don’t touch Eden Center,” she said, adding that the plan has set out goals to preserve its culture through programming and public art investments.
Through their advocacy, the collective also aims to find a permanent home for the Vietnamese community in the DMV area.
“[Eden Place is] the closest thing that we have to really unpacking and understanding our culture as Vietnamese,” said Nguyen, who has only returned to Vietnam a handful of times. “Going to the Eden Center brings us a bit closer to our heritage and just a better understanding of our culture.”
For Annie Nguyen, a 40-year-old stay-at-home mom of two, the market offers the opportunity to sell her homemade rare Vietnamese snacks as a side hustle. Every day, the stay-at-home mom of two would bring new patches of bánh tráng trộn (rice paper salad) and cơm cháy (crispy rice crackers) to Phước Lộc bakery and deli. Standing in a corner of the store, whose name translates to “happiness and wealth,” she avoids the heavy flow of people for a few hours while jotting down the number of servings sold and the profit.
Annie Nguyen moved to Virginia 17 years ago for college and now resides in Burke, which is just a 15-minute drive from Eden Center. She believes that the market is a cultural landmark to the Vietnamese community in the U.S. and a great place to earn extra income.
“Many people from other states come to Eden Center daily to get a taste of home and Vietnamese goods,” she said, explaining that the large Vietnamese community there has created a market and demand for affordable Vietnamese products.
Not everyone is worried about the displacement rumors. One of them is Diane Hua, who said the benefits outweigh possible threats and consequences.
A stall of tropical fruits in a hallway of Eden Center. (Nate Ha)
Born and raised in Kiên Giang, a Southern province of Vietnam, Hua immigrated to Falls Church more than 30 years ago. She opened a fashion shop near Route 50 before she relocated to Eden Center, one of the first to do so, first selling DVDs and tape cassettes before switching to her now spiritual business
“I really like the plan and what it proposes,” Hua said, especially agreeing with having more green spaces and better pavements around the strip mall. “If it works, then it would make sense that rent prices increase correspondingly, and if we can’t afford the space anymore then we can just always move somewhere else.”
Red lanterns and decorations hanging outside of Hua’s store. (Nate Ha)
Thien Le, 42, who runs a cell phone and computer repair shop at the end of one of the hallways, said he didn’t know or care much about the plan either. Le first moved to the U.S. 10 years ago and has been at Eden Center for seven years.
“Sure, it’s nice here because you have a community, people who know and have been going to your store for months and years,” Le said, adding that he also has loyal customers whom he considers family. “So, if the rent rises and I can no longer afford it, we can always find a better location in Northern Virginia, and they would still come to us anyway.”
A historic marker, placed by the entrance to Eden Center in 2022, details how Vietnamese refugees were
forced to relocate to Falls Church after being priced out of Clarendon in the 1980s. (Nate Ha)
A child of refugees, Nguyen said she understood Hua and Le’s mindset.
“Our community has been double displaced,” the collective’s Nguyen said. “And they're just sort of willing to because they're self-determined and very resilient, but it is really scary, and it feels unnecessary.”
After the fall of Saigon, 134,000 Vietnamese refugees relocated to the US between 1975 and 1978, with an estimated 20,000 settling in Northern Virginia, particularly in Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church. Many set up shops in Clarendon, but rising rent prices following the opening of the new Clarendon station in 1979 forced most of them to relocate to Eden Center by 1984.
Many community members hope that the final draft will contain explicit and concise guidelines on anti-displacement measures, ensuring that the community can fully reap the benefits envisioned by the plan.
“These people are refugees, and their whole life has been moving and starting over,” Tran said, adding that many of the store owners are in their 60s. “How many moves are we going to survive as a community, and how many moves until people are just tired and worn down and their money's run out?”
However, Tran said she was proud to see her community evolve from a history of silence to one of active advocacy for the collective good.
“We want a strong community hub that can withstand any changes of the future,” she said. “We just want to see a future where our community can be safe and stable to flourish.”
