{"id":224,"date":"2017-04-28T14:03:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T21:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/?p=224"},"modified":"2017-04-28T15:39:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T22:39:34","slug":"a-restaurant-owner-braces-himself-to-keep-seattles-little-saigon-vietnamese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/2017\/04\/28\/a-restaurant-owner-braces-himself-to-keep-seattles-little-saigon-vietnamese\/","title":{"rendered":"A restaurant owner braces himself to keep Seattle’s Little Saigon Vietnamese"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Developers
Developers have been eyeing Seattle’s Little Saigon district. (Diana Nguyen\/NextGenRadio)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tam Nguyen believes\u00a0many Vietnamese are wary of airing grievances publicly because of their experiences in Vietnam, where you \u201cdon\u2019t have any kind of influence and if you raise your voice, you may not live the next day in Vietnam.”<\/h4>\n

But a\u00a0threat to business owners’\u00a0livelihoods in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood spurred a shift, with Nguyen at the forefront.<\/p>\n

“So,” Nguyen said, “we learned.\u201d Learned to knock on doors, gather petitions and get involved in city government \u2014 things Nguyen and his neighbors had generally avoided for decades.<\/p>\n\n

 <\/p>\n

Much like the rest of Seattle, the Little Saigon district is undergoing changes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s clear from the vantage point of Tamarind Tree restaurant. Nguyen, the owner of the popular Vietnamese eatery, points up to the hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see the light poles? Right there? That\u2019s Yesler Terrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesler Terrace<\/a>\u00a0was a thirty-acre public housing site that\u2019s being redeveloped by the Seattle Housing Authority into a mixed-income community of housing and businesses. Nguyen\u2019s restaurant is tucked in the back corner of Little Saigon\u2019s Asian Plaza, abutting the hill leading up to Yesler Terrace. The restaurant is well-known in Seattle, but Nguyen isn\u2019t so sure he\u2019ll be able to afford to stay there.<\/p>\n

The owners of Asian Plaza are planning to redevelop the aging strip mall \u2014 something Nguyen saw on the horizon when he heard about the Yesler Terrace redevelopment plans. He knew that more development in the district could make maintaining businesses, including his own restaurant, unaffordable.<\/p>\n

Little Saigon became a hub for the Vietnamese in the 1980s and ’90s. At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the US admitted 125,000 people. Now <\/span>the Seattle area is home to some 46,000 people who were born in Vietnam<\/span><\/a>. They opened restaurants, jewelry and grocery stores that pepper the once industrial corner of town that makes up Little Saigon. Nguyen hasn\u2019t seen the kind of development that\u2019s happening in the district today since his arrival in the US as a teen in 1980.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the four blocks that make up the district are relatively untouched compared to the rest of the city. Most of the small businesses top out around 30 feet \u2014 a drastic difference from the high rises just off in the distance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the last district still very central, but extremely affordable for developers,\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n

When the city proposed the redevelopment of Yesler Terrace, Nguyen and a friend drafted a petition expressing concern about what it could mean for the rest of the district. The restaurateur says he brought a stack of signatures to the city council, but was unsuccessful in influencing the city\u2019s decision regarding the building complex’s\u00a0height, which was Nguyen’s\u00a0concern. But\u00a0this was one of the first advocacy efforts to help establish communication with the\u00a0city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Left:
Left: Tam Nguyen opened Tamarind Tree in 2004 to help introduce the larger Seattle community to Vietnamese cuisine. Right: Yenvy Pham, co-owner of Pho Bac, got more involved in the community after meeting Nguyen at a neighborhood meeting. (Diana Nguyen\/NextGenRadio)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The grassroots organization\u00a0Friends of Little Saigon<\/a>\u00a0started in 2011 to help promote and preserve the district. Nguyen sits on the board of the organization that serves as a liaison between Little Saigon and the city, making sure their interests are represented. Until then, the Vietnamese community in Seattle had largely avoided involvement in social and political matters with the city, Nguyen said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just got straight to what hurt the most for a business owner, because I\u2019m a business owner, so I know exactly what they\u2019re thinking about,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Chau
Chau Dao refills condiment bottles at Pho Bac, which is said to be the city’s first pho restaurant. (Diana Nguyen\/NextGenRadio)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yenvy Pham, the 29-year-old co-owner of Pho Bac, another restaurant in Little Saigon, is the creative director of Friends of Little Saigon. She believes change is inevitable. But Pham wants developers to know that the district <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> paying attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we going to do keep the culture [and] identity alive? How can we bring more people to the table? How can we make economic development more well rounded?\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nguyen worries about the erasure of the history from those he calls \u201coutsiders.\u201d He fears developers will have no concern for how Little Saigon came to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s no concern for the mom and pop shops, no concern for the identity, preservation for the Vietnamese community,\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n

As refugees from Vietnam, he said, those four blocks are a physical representation of a place the Vietnamese <\/span>already<\/span><\/i> left behind. He doesn\u2019t want to leave his home again. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tam Nguyen is the owner of a popular restaurant in Seattle’s Vietnamese business district. But increasing development makes for an uncertain future for the commerce and culture of Little Saigon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":313,"featured_media":250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,6,9,8,10],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seattle2017.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}