‘We want a place to worship’: San Jose Buddhist temple would be a first for the region

For Victor Thach, a 63-year-old San Jose resident who escaped the instability of post-war Vietnam and landed in the United States in 1986, a Buddhist temple on San Jose’s Sunset Court represents a vital gathering place for one of the city’s small communities. Established at a single-family home about a decade after his arrival, the temple adorned with Buddha statues serves the local Khmer Krom population, a group of ethnic Cambodians from southern Vietnam.

But its members — numbering over 100 families — have outgrown the home’s roughly 1,000 square feet. They now want to relocate east to the Evergreen neighborhood — a proposed development that would offer the first-ever large-scale Buddhist temple in the Bay Area for the Khmer Krom and create an architectural landmark in the eastern part of the city that mirrors similar holy sites in Southeast Asia.

“We want a good place to worship,” Thach said. “I don’t want the next generation to look down on us and see that we haven’t done anything for three decades.”

The proposed Wat Khmer Kampuchea Krom temple on 2740 Ruby Ave. would greatly expand the community’s footprint with two buildings covering nearly 14,000 square feet. The cost, which could reach $25 million, will be financed through a nonprofit set up by Lyna Lam, wife of local tech billionaire Chris Larsen.

The project started in earnest in 2018 but hit roadblocks from neighbors concerned about the size of the temple and its potential traffic impacts, with many asserting it didn’t fit in with the character of the neighborhood.

The structures would include a temple sanctuary and an adjoining community center incorporating traditional elements of Buddhist temple exteriors, including a 65-foot spire and a golden conical-shaped monument, known as a caetdi in the Khmer language. Behind the blueprints are the Bay Area-based Andrew Mann Architecture and Siegel & Strain Architects firms — along with a Cambodian-based design team. Land use consultant Erik Schoennauer is also involved with the project. The proposed site is currently an empty lot.

The buildings’ interior would include a community hall, library and living space for eight monks. Overall, the site is expected to host 50 people day-to-day — and up to 300 during celebrations.

On Wednesday night, after a thumbs up from city staffers, San Jose’s Planning Commission approved the new temple in an 8-1 vote, with member Jorge A. Garcia voting against the project. The project will go before the City Council at the end of March. Groundbreaking is slated for this summer.

Lam, the project’s main benefactor, is a Khmer Krom advocate and founder of the nonprofit A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, which would fund, own and manage the new temple. Lam herself escaped both the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge regime’s genocide in Cambodia, coming to the United States in 1983 by way of refugee camps in both Thailand and the Philippines. Lam and her family first settled in a Pittsburg housing project, and she initially worked at a software company and then opened her own restaurant, which she later sold.

At one time, Lam was a regular at the existing temple on Sunset Court but stopped attending because it was too crowded. The Cambodian community in the Bay Area is generally low-income, she said, and has a scattered network of small temples that are usually run out of small houses. While Stockton has a more established temple, it is difficult for the community’s elderly population to make the 80-mile commute.

So for Lam, an opportunity arose.

“I want to build a temple that has proper governance and a proper space to teach kids, just like the other churches,” she said. “If you see any proper (Buddhist) temple, it’s usually in a rural area. I don’t want that. I want to build a temple where the community is.”

The Khmer Krom are one of the largest minority groups in Vietnam with over 1 million people and hail from an area in the country’s southwest region that includes the Mekong Delta, according to Minority Rights Group International, a U.K.-based human rights organization. The group practices the school of Theravada Buddhism, which focuses on “attaining self-liberation through one’s own efforts,” the temple project’s website states.

As plans for the project moved forward, residents also claimed that an accompanying underground parking garage didn’t conform with the neighborhood, which is largely residential and near Groesbeck Hill Park.

In response to neighbors’ various concerns, planners scaled back the building sizes by 25% and included a surface-level parking lot. Planners also pointed to other nearby places of worship, including the Evergreen Islamic Center and a Sikh temple.

For some neighbors during Wednesday’s planning commission meeting, the project’s adjustments haven’t been enough. Shekhar Krishnan, a 23-year resident of the area, argued during public comment that the Islamic and Sikh sites are tucked away farther from residential sites to offset their impact.

“It is obvious that it does not fit into the character of the neighborhood,” Krishnan said.  “While I would very much like for the Khmer to have a place of worship, this is just not the right place for it.”

But the comments didn’t deter Planning Commissioner Charles Cantrell from voting to approve the project, along with seven other colleagues on the board.

“Monks are generally quiet,” Cantrell said with a smile. “It is a byproduct of how they practice. People deserve the right to express themselves and to worship in peace. To make this type of investment in your community at this level could not in any way be to degrade your property value. I really hope that you give an opportunity for this expression in your community. An expression of love and peace.”