On January 18, 2023, the Planning Commission held a Listening Session on the East End Small Area Plan (SAP). Many people from the Vietnamese community attended and spoke of their fears that the SAP would encourage redevelopment of the Eden Center and its vicinity. That redevelopment would raise rents to such an extent that the 125+ small businesses there would be forced out.

Their fears, they said, were not unfounded, because it had happened before. Clarendon was the “Little Saigon” of the Northern Virginia area. It was the redevelopment of the Clarendon area that led to the displacement of these Vietnamese businesses to the Eden Center. The history was documented by a Virginia Tech graduate project in urban planning in 2014. To learn more, visit their website Echoes of Little Saigon.

Many speakers also criticized the lack of City outreach to the community most impacted by the East End Small Area Plan. The session ended with the Planning Commissioners requesting that City staff reach out to the community for input.

Below is a video clip (4m 36s) of one of the speakers, Jenn Tran, with a recording of her father, speaking about the fear of displacement and the lack of outreach. The full session may be viewed here.

Transcript (edited for readability)

Tran: Hi, my name is Jenn Tran. I am a long time resident of Falls Church. I wanted to take some time to share some voices from the community that aren’t here tonight. … [T]here are a lot of young Viet people here, but we are missing the voices of our elders who built the Eden Center and haven’t always felt welcome in the public process. It’s not that they don’t care or they don’t have opinions. Most of the people over 50 who aren’t business owners had no idea the City had any plans. Many of them prefer to stay anonymous, so these are some of their words.

One mother shared, “I do not want to see residential buildings, because it will cause prices to rise. If Eden Center had new developments, I would feel sad and disappointed because Eden reminds me of my homeland and making it look like Mosaic would lose that.”

Another said, “I want more parking spaces and an Asian style garden with a playground so that families, children, and elderly can meet and play. I don’t want American stores in the center. American stores can be found easily everywhere else.” Another said, “I don’t want to see Mom and Pop shops that have been there forever…driven out by rising rent costs. What’s special is the sense of community and feeling like there’s a little part of Vietnam in the States.”

Lastly I’d like to share a part of a conversation I had with my father Kevin Gui Chen. We’ve lived in Falls Church for almost 20 years, and we care a lot about the community. So this clip starts after we discussed the City’s proposal for 10-to-12-story mixed-use buildings. I’m not sure what planners mean about small-scale senior residential, but at the last community meeting there was talk of 10-to-12-story buildings. I wouldn’t really call those small scale.

(Jen Tran plays recording on cell phone. The following is the recording.)

Tran: How would you feel if Eden Center started…to build the high-rise Mosaic [or] Founders Row type [of building]?

Chen: …[T]he Vietnamese will be priced out of that area. The rent will increase whether you get the choice or you don’t get choice. The existing building you drive down – the community that create the identity for that center. Because the community, you say “Oh, yes! That looks cool!” But they forget the Mosaic look cool but that not look cool for Vietnamese. It look cool for some big company with big money. It [may] not happen overnight but eventually…. Don’t forget what happened in Clarendon. Think about that. …

Tran: I think the City sees Eden Center, and they just see a huge parking lot.

Chen: But don’t they see that [the lot is] packed every weekend? You couldn’t find the parking.Tran: …[A] lot of people said that there’s not enough parking, but the City seems to think that there’s too much parking and that they could use it for something else.

Chen: The City need to have empty space. You cannot put good high-rise building everywhere that you see open.

Tran: And Founders Row so close to the street, it feels very claustrophobic, right?

Chen: Right now, Falls Church City is always like that. You travel along Route 7. [Do] you see any open space anymore? No. Instead of that, instead of building something…big and tall and shiny, …why don’t you give the owner incentive? …[I]f you monetize your existing center by upgrade what you have, but keep the tenants, we will give you incentive. Not to facelift Eden Center in the way that changes the identity and the choice behind that. This is where the community, where my community is. No matter what happen, I have to stick with it.

(End of recording.)

Tran: A lot of people are concerned about displacement. If you don’t know about Little Saigon, I encourage you to look into the Echoes of Little Saigon project about Clarendon in the [19]80s. There are tools to prevent this from happening again. Things like grandfathering in rent rates, and requiring minimum occupancy ratio for minority business owners, and committing funding to these legacy [businesses], building business preservation programs. Not just talking about them. It’s just whether the City is willing to demand that of the developer in their Special Exception requirements. We want more than nice words. We want commitment to action.

Thank you.