New initiatives are underway to revitalize and support Little Saigon businesses and plan for strategic future development, direct results of a 2024 demographic and economic report on Little Saigon produced by students and faculty from Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics.
“We are already seeing meaningful outcomes (of the report),” said CSUF alum Tam Nguyen, chair of the Cal State Fullerton Philanthropic Foundation Board, who commissioned the study.
“Our OC Small Business Development Center has partnered with Westminster and Fountain Valley to host business conferences supporting local entrepreneurs,” he said. In addition, “New child care workforce initiatives have launched, including an in-home, licensed child care program taught in Vietnamese.”
Participants who complete this program and apply for a state child care license receive a $5,000 grant from First Five OC and the County of Orange, which helps families create small businesses while addressing critical child care needs, Nguyen said. He is the second-generation owner of Little Saigon-based Advance Beauty College.
Orange County’s Little Saigon comprises parts of Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Fountain Valley and is the largest Vietnamese community in the United States. Cal State Fullerton’s 2024 profile highlighted data about businesses, employment, education, rents and mortgages, among many other factors that characterize life for the multigenerational residents of Little Saigon.
Data presented in the report was intended to help guide decision-making by community leaders. “It offers cities, small businesses, nonprofits, educators, chambers of commerce and investors credible information to support thoughtful economic development decisions,” Nguyen said.
“We knew that the report has the potential to generate this kind of impact,” said Anil Puri, director of CSUF’s Woods Center for Economic Analysis and Forecasting, “and are thrilled by the adoption of the report by the cities to create plans for revitalizing Little Saigon.”
Ever since refugee families began arriving in Orange County from Vietnam in 1975 in the first of several waves, Little Saigon has grown organically. The CSUF report now offers a guide for strategic growth for the future of its many communities.
“What Little Saigon lacked was a shared, data-driven understanding of who we are today and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead,” Nguyen said.
By its nature, the report encourages collaborative planning. “One of the biggest things that has come from this report is bringing all of the Little Saigon cities closer together to focus on regionwide opportunities versus individual city opportunities,” Puri said. “We have seen, and hopefully will continue to see, all four cities working together on key Little Saigon initiatives.”
One example was the Little Saigon 50-Year Celebration last summer, in which the four cities together celebrated the Little Saigon small business community.
Recently, the Garden Grove City Council agreed to develop urban design guidelines and revitalization planning that align directly with the intent of the 2024 study. “The city has also implemented a new loan program supporting small business expansion,” said Nguyen.
“From the beginning, the intention was to bring together academic research, local governments, business owners, nonprofit organizations and community stakeholders around shared facts and shared aspirations,” Nguyen said. “Little Saigon spans multiple cities, generations and industries,” he said. “No single organization or leader can define its future alone.”
Cal State Fullerton students were instrumental in gathering data for the 2024 report, and for many of them, this work had particular relevance.
“A third of our student population is of Asian heritage, and many of these students come from the Little Saigon community,” Puri said. “The report has helped inform them about the great progress that has been made by the community as well as the gaps that exist compared to overall Orange County benchmarks. Seeing the revitalization plans take shape helps our students understand the process by which such reports can play a key role in the future economic development strategies for their communities.”
Students helped with data collection and processing, including retrieving data from older decennial censuses and processing data on local businesses in the Little Saigon area, said Aaron Popp, assistant professor in the CSUF Department of Economics, which worked on the report.
“Little Saigon represents one of the most successful refugee economic stories in America, but success also brings responsibility,” Nguyen said. “The report helps us move from nostalgia toward stewardship, asking how we support aging first- generation entrepreneurs while creating opportunity for younger generations who want to innovate and stay connected to their cultural roots.”