While searching further, I found that organizations like the Hmong American Friendship Associations have community partnerships with L.A.N.D.. I believe that it is important to make the Hmong population, who may not know about such organizations, aware that they exist and that they are willing to help them better their businesses, homes, and their well-being in the community.
Full text of article:
Local Hmong entrepreneurs have vision for Lisbon Avenue
The Business Journal of Milwaukee - by Shannon Stevens
The stretch of Lisbon Avenue from 24th Street to 40th Street, where Washington Park begins, is not an area frequented by most Milwaukee-area businesspeople.
The neighborhood is riddled with numerous empty lots, mostly city-owned, overgrown with weeds and decorated with wind-blown trash. Many of the commercial and residential buildings still standing are marked by the plywood-covered windows of abandonment or impending condemnation.
In this forlorn neighborhood, squatters aren't shy, openly taking up residence in those same buildings.
For Da Xiong, those same 15 blocks are a window of opportunity, a chance for self-improvement and a way to provide for future generations of Hmong refugees and their American-born children.
Da's vision for Lisbon Avenue is of a thriving Asiantown, filled end-to-end with little grocery stores, antique shops, Laundromats and offices. He envisions an Asiantown for the some 25,000 Southeast Asians in Milwaukee, as well as other residents who want Asian goods or just a neat outing.
Da wants to start it all off by moving his west side laundry business from 35th Street and Juneau Avenue, where he rents space from Harley-Davidson Inc., to a building on the corner of Lisbon and 30th Street. He also has his eye on 3109 Lisbon Ave., an empty warehouse a block away on 31st Street. He wants to turn that space into a meeting and entertainment hall for the local Asian population, which doesn't have any such facility now.
"As I bring people in for special occasions, it will attract more people there," said Da, laughing as he quoted the famous movie line "build it and they will come."
Da said it is important to attract people to the area, not to tell them to go there. "If I move in there and say come, they may listen to me."
While Da's plans for Lisbon are ambitious, he is not alone in his determination. He is chairing a group of five active members of the local Hmong community, mostly college-educated and close in age to 31-year-old Da.
"My dream is to create an image in Milwaukee where on a nice Saturday, people from all over the state will go shopping in Milwaukee's (Asiantown), not Chicago's (Chinatown)," said Ge Xiong, executive director and project coordinator at the nonprofit organization Hmong Educational Advancements Inc. (HEA).
HEA was founded in 1991 to help young Southeast Asian refugees earn educations and to help them become self-sufficient. The group has since formed the Southeast Asian Business and Economic Development project, thanks in part to a $45,000 grant from the Helen Bader Foundation.
That project has enabled the HEA to help numerous businesses succeed by helping them with loan applications, computer training and writing business plans.
Local businessman Yeng Xong of Xiong Corp. on 2729 W. Vliet St., already is showing his support for the Asiantown idea with his purchase of a 70,000-square-foot building on 27th Street between Lisbon Avenue and Vine Street. The enormous, gray, two-story building, still hung with a Rampart Automotive Products Co. sign, will house Xiong Corp.'s massive wholesale and retail food business on the ground floor, with offices and warehousing planned for above.
Interviewed at his thriving Asian market, which supplies smaller stores from Green Bay to Madison, Yeng was confident that his new location will be a success, though he was cautious in his optimism about a complete altering of Lisbon.
"We need support from aldermen, the city of Milwaukee and the neighborhood," Yeng said. "The most important thing is the neighborhood."
Da agrees that the response from the neighborhood will be an important component in the fate of their plan.
To the west of Lisbon, which Da estimates to be some 90 percent occupied by Hmong and other Southeast Asian refugees, a strip of markets and small businesses is expected to be embraced.
To the east, only about 30 percent Southeast Asian, neighbor relations could be more of an issue.
Although Da says tensions between the Asian and black communities around Lisbon have eased since the mid-90s, he worries that visible signs of Asian success could make life there more difficult.
Da's dream of Asiantown is consistent with the city's overall vision for that area. City officials envision local commercial businesses complementing the residential renovations taking place east of 24th Street where Lisbon becomes Walnut Street.
Taking a gamble on the neighborhood is worth it, Da said, as elsewhere in Milwaukee and the United States, it is difficult for people starting with so little to work their way up to financial independence.
In the neighborhood around Lisbon, houses sell for anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000, he said, giving recent refugees a fighting chance to get on their feet financially and eventually contribute to their community.
Da came to Milwaukee from Laos in 1986 with a clear path in mind: find a place to live, go to school and learn the language. He then intended to go into business to make money, become self-supporting and create more jobs.
"That's the cycle," said Da. "That's how I am supposed to contribute to myself and my society."
Standing on the corner of Lisbon and 24th, with neat rows of new homes stretching behind him on Walnut, Da looks west and sees not litter-strewn lots, but instead nice open spaces. Not boarded-up shacks, but rather affordable sites for corner markets.
He hopes the rows of fragile little trees might be growing toward a new future. A future where instead of scorching alone in the sun by empty walks, they will shade droves of shoppers, laughing children with fresh ice cream in hand or wedding parties in brilliant satins and silks.
Da hopes that if his vision is realized, the stretch of Lisbon from 24th to 40th will be renamed Asian Street.
"This is my dream," he said.
All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.
