A large clock tower looms about 40 feet above the intersection of Bolsa Avenue and Brookhurst Street in an area known as Little Saigon.
While it may look innocuous, many Vietnamese refugees will know exactly what it is – a replica of Saigon’s Bến Thành Market tower.
The clock is part of an $80 million development called Bolsa Row that includes a Class A luxury apartment complex with 200 units and a soon to be open 26,000-square-foot shopping center in Westminster.
The clock is also a homage to the American success story of Joann Pham, who fled South Vietnam after the communists took it over.
“The architecture of Bolsa Row was meant to evoke a nostalgia for pre-war Saigon, the one my family and I left behind 50 years ago,” Pham told the Business Journal. “So, I’m hoping this development serves as a bridge to newer generations of Vietnamese Americans who call Orange County their home.”
Joann Pham along with five other local Vietnamese American entrepreneurs are being recognized by the Business Journal this week in commemoration of 50 years since the fall of Saigon under the title: “Vietnam’s Loss, Orange County’s Gain.”
The Arrival
After arriving in the U.S. in the 1970s, Joann Pham met Bac Pham; the couple have two children, Jaimie and Aileen.
“They barely had a few cents to their name,” said David Nguyễn, the chief financial officer at IP Westminster that owns the Bolsa Row project.
“They didn’t come here with any amount of wealth.”
What Joann Pham did have was “an incredible business mind,” Nguyễn said. She began Greenlight Financial, a mortgage originator that she eventually sold for a “great outcome” to Nationstar Financial Services, he said.
NationStar paid $76 million for the acquisition, according to its 2014 annual report.
Then the couple decided to develop real estate, starting off with single-family homes and fourplexes. They eventually bought the six-acre plot where the apartment complex sits behind the shopping center that is scheduled to open around the end of this year; the site may eventually include a hotel.
Joann and Boc grew up heavily influenced by French architecture in Saigon; Vietnam was a colony of France for 74 years.
“For them, Vietnam has a very French feel,” Nguyễn said. “They spoke French growing up. They went to French schools. This architecture reflects quintessentially South Vietnamese.”
Hence, the company overspent on making the project cosmetically beautiful with touches like colonnades and high arches in walkways, he said, adding that it’s most likely the most valuable apartment complex in Westminster, he said.
Nguyễn noted the complex doesn’t look like “Confucian Chinese architecture at all.”
“Some people will look at this as like, how does this look Asian at all?” Nguyễn said.
“It’s kind of like the civic center of the city. And that’s our aspirations for this project too. We want people in Orange County to feel proud about this project. This is not just for Vietnamese.”
Nguyễn is married to his high school sweetheart, Jamie Pham, daughter of Joann and Bac Pham; the couple have three children. Nguyễn previously worked at Goldman Sachs and the Angeleno Group private equity firm in Los Angeles before deciding to join the family firm.
“I wanted to be involved because I felt emotionally connected to it too,” he said.
The Right Move
Joann Pham is grateful for the opportunities given by America, particularly since Vietnam isn’t as accepting of female leaders, Nguyễn said.
“It was painful for her to uproot her life and come to this country,” Nguyễn said. “But the thing is, she’s done great here.
“Joann and Bac’s story is the quintessential American kind of success story. I think that probably one misconception that people may have about this project is that a lot of this money is foreign money. No, it’s not. Joann and Bac came here with nothing to their name, and they built it. They built it from scratch.”
His family believes leaving Vietnam was “absolutely” the right decision.
“The thing is about Vietnamese Americans is that I think they have nothing but gratitude for what this country has done for them.”
A Vietnamese American who Stands out as an American
David Nguyễn, who was born in the U.S. to Vietnamese refugees, has visited the country of his parents, where he is known as “Việt Kiều.”
“It just means overseas Vietnamese, because the diaspora of Vietnamese folks across the whole world was so widespread,” he said. “You have Vietnamese Australians and Vietnamese Germans and Vietnamese Americans, and they all come back. Obviously, we don’t dress like them, or we don’t talk like them. They keep you at arm’s length, but they also kind of accept you. It’s a kind of an odd thing.”
Nguyễn, who grew up in Orange County, says his Vietnamese isn’t great.
“I’m out of practice, but even if I spoke it perfectly and I could get someone to give me a makeover and give me Vietnamese clothes and Vietnamese hairstyle, it would be very obvious that I’m an American.
“Americans are generally really friendly. They’ll be like, ‘Hey, how’s your day going?’ and they actually mean it. It’s not just a pleasantry. When you’re on a flight sharing the same plane for three hours, Americans are like, ‘Let me get to know you.’ It’s that stuff that kind of makes you stand out as an American.”
His parents, who were lawyers, fled South Vietnam by boat, residing in a Malaysian refugee camp before scraping up enough money for plane tickets to America. His parents have also returned to Vietnam for visits, he said.
“For the longest time, it was still emotionally raw to go back,” Nguyễn said. “The government makes references to the American War, and there’s a lot of propaganda. A lot of folks in Little Saigon still hate what happened, and they’re very anti-communist.”
—Peter J. Brennan