Developers Think Big for Little Saigon for New Year

Little Saigon will welcome the year of the mouse later this month with a Tet celebration along Bolsa Avenue featuring the customary dragon dance, firecrackers and food.

But if Frank Jao and other prominent developers have their way, 1996 will be anything but mousy in the heart of Orange County’s Vietnamese community.

Business leaders have embarked on an ambitious campaign to transform the vibrant row of shops and restaurants into an international tourist mecca with a distinctively Asian ambience that would set it apart from the surrounding suburban sprawl.

“In the eyes of most people, this is basically a business district now,” Jao said. “We want to see more of a cultural flavor and style. In order to attract tourists, you need that atmosphere. They don’t come just to shop.”

A landmark pedestrian bridge has been proposed for the center of Little Saigon. Developers also are planning to build temples, place dozens of ornate statues around parking lots and add Asian architectural flourishes to the district’s boxy commercial buildings.

In the long term, they envision hotels, a cultural center and a redesigned streetscape complete with sidewalk cafes, landscaped medians and Asian-style street lamps.

Before the grand plan becomes reality, however, it must clear several obstacles.

The expensive public works projects would require backing by the city of Westminster, which until now has not played a major role in Little Saigon’s long-term strategy. City leaders say there is no community consensus on the scope of the improvements or how to pay for them.

Opposition is expected from some nearby residents who have already raised concerns about crime, traffic and overdevelopment. Moreover, some experts warn that turning Little Saigon into a mainstream tourist trap ultimately could hurt the district more than help it.

Frank Liu, an associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Irvine, said several of the nation’s older ethnic communities--most notably Los Angeles’ Chinatown--have declined, in part because they focused on tourism instead of providing dining and other services for residents.

“The center of the Chinese community moved to the San Gabriel Valley,” Liu said. “People stopped going to L.A.’s Chinatown because there wasn’t much for them to purchase. . . . They didn’t need to go to the tourist shops.”

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For now, all the indicators along Bolsa Avenue point to continued growth, not decline. The mile-long strip is home to hundreds of small businesses that together generate more than $500,000 a year in sales tax revenue for the city.

Civic and business leaders maintain that Little Saigon has the potential for much greater prosperity as a shopping, dining and entertainment attraction. The district’s international reputation and close proximity to Disneyland, advocates say, provide an ideal environment.

Jao and others see their biggest challenge as creating a one-of-a-kind look. Right now, Little Saigon is a haphazard mix of commercial buildings and some newer structures with elaborate Asian motifs.

“When people get off the tour bus, they want to be hit between the eyes that this is an Asian area,” said Frank Zellner, executive director of the Westminster Chamber of Commerce.

To some merchants, city support for Little Saigon is long overdue and could be a more modest version of Anaheim’s planned face-lift for the motel district around Disneyland.

Attracting tourists makes sense, Zellner said, because younger Vietnamese Americans tend to assimilate more than their parents, favoring a trip to the mall over a day of shopping on Bolsa Avenue.

But Liu and other experts on ethnic communities warn that catering too much to tourists might alienate the local consumers who up to now have made Little Saigon such a resounding success.

“The heart has to remain commercial,” Liu said. “It’s needed to retain the vitality. Tourism is a tag-on. It’s not essential to survival.”

Population shifts in the past three decades have radically altered Asian American communities across the nation as more affluent residents have moved out of urban areas and established suburban enclaves such as Monterey Park in the San Gabriel Valley, Liu said.

Orange County, though, is unlikely to see an emerging Vietnamese community challenge Little Saigon, Liu and others agree.

While some Vietnamese Americans are leaving for the planned communities of South County, high land prices and strict zoning laws make it difficult for full-scale ethnic business districts to take shape, they said.

Little Saigon was created two decades ago when land was much cheaper and Bolsa Avenue was a sleepy, nondescript street.

“I don’t think there’ll be anything comparable,” Liu said.