Fairfax County could be next in bestowing the honorary name “Saigon Blvd” on a stretch of Wilson Blvd near Seven Corners.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay nodded in the affirmative when asked at a Wednesday (Jan. 22) ceremony whether Fairfax would be willing to join Falls Church in renaming the area in front of the Eden Center in honor of the one-time South Vietnamese capital.
For more than four decades, that shopping center has been a hub of Vietnamese life in Northern Virginia.
The honorary renaming has been two years in the making, a joint effort of the Falls Church City government, Viet Place Collective and the Eden Center’s management.
“We are just really honored,” Graham Eddy, vice president of Eden Center, said.
Restaurateurs and shop owners who initially had settled in Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975 had begun by the 1980s to relocate to the Eden Center, on a parcel where Falls Church, Fairfax and Arlington come together.
The honorary name in the 6600 and 6700 blocks of Wilson Blvd has no legal standing and doesn’t affect mail or public safety services.
But with the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) approaching, it was an appropriate time to recognize the contributions of the Vietnamese American community in Northern Virginia, community leaders said.
“We understand the importance,” said McKay, who attended the event to unveil the new “Saigon Blvd” street sign with Mason District Supervisor Andres Jimenez.
The renaming would help “preserve the cultural heritage and traditions” that are now “more important than ever” while “making sure that legacy continues,” McKay said.
Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi thanked the crowd for braving temperatures well below freezing — about 70 degrees lower than the daily highs this week half a world away in Ho Chi Minh City.
Hardi said the 50th anniversary of Saigon’s fall and the collapse of the South Vietnam government on April 30, 1975 will represent a “somber and significant day” for the local Vietnamese American community.
She praised the hard work of the immigrant community and their descendants in creating “a cultural haven in Northern Virginia and the East Coast.”
Places like Eden Center are the living embodiment of “the stories, the dreams, the aspirations” of immigrants everywhere, Hardi said.
Wilson Blvd isn’t the only local street that could get a new name celebrating the area’s Asian community.
According to Annandale Today, the Korean American Association of Greater Washington has proposed giving a segment of Little River Turnpike the honorary moniker of “Gangnam Street” — a reference to the commercial district in Seoul, South Korea — as a nod to the corridor’s abundant Korean businesses. Two meetings to get feedback on the proposal are planned, with the first coming next Thursday, Jan. 30 at the Mason Government Center.
