By Katelyn Vue, Sahan Journal

For two decades, Mai Xiong’s family has greeted and served food to many travelers, Hmong families and schoolchildren on field trips to HmongTown Marketplace. Xiong and her husband operate Annie’s Restaurant, which they took over 10 years ago from her brother.

“I think everybody is pretty much rooted here,” she said of the vendors.

Several vendors who spoke to Sahan Journal called HmongTown Marketplace a landmark, an economic engine and a longtime gathering spot for elders to reconnect in the Hmong community. But HmongTown Marketplace could close after St. Cloud-based Stearns Bank sued owner Toua Xiong in mid-September, seeking $6.6 million in loans, interest and late fees.

“It’s the main source of income for a lot of us vendors,” Mai Xiong said of the marketplace. “It was really shocking.”

Toua Xiong opened HmongTown Marketplace at 217 Como Ave. in 2004 with more than 200 vendors. Originally a lumberyard, the complex took years to convert into a shopping center with air conditioning, heat and sprinklers, he told Sahan Journal.

At a visit to the market on Sept. 30, the earthy smell of Hmong herbal medicine filled the air. Hmong vendors carried fanny packs, ready to make cash transactions with customers. Traditional Hmong clothing adorned with beads and coins lined the walls.

Many Hmong people, including Xiong, immigrated to the United States after serving in the CIA-backed military during the Vietnam War. Xiong said he came to the United States as a young man with his wife, and built a new life from scratch.

He created HmongTown Marketplace because he wanted to help newly arrived Hmong Minnesotans start their own businesses and support their families. He also wanted to showcase Hmong culture and traditions to young people and those from different backgrounds.

“These vendors are the people representing our fathers and mothers who brought us here, and they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school to get educated,” Xiong said. “When their children would like to know what the Hmong life looked like in Laos, they come here, and see it.”

Stearns Bank filed a mortgage foreclosure of HmongTown Marketplace, and asked a judge to appoint a receiver to collect rent and sell the property. Stearns Bank alleges that Xiong failed to pay them back for loans on HmongTown Marketplace and the old Sears building in Maplewood, which both went into default sometime in 2025.

Xiong said Stearns Bank contacted him in October 2023, offering to help him buy and renovate the Sears property with a loan. He said the bank told him he would need to refinance HmongTown Marketplace to have the money to buy the Sears property. Xiong also said the bank gave him an interest reserve and funds to cover new architectural designs for the Sears property, promising they would later pay for the renovations.

The Sears property is listed as a defendant under the name “Hmongtown 2,” according to the lawsuit. Xiong and his wife, Nou Vang, and their other businesses are also listed as co-defendants in the lawsuit.

In Stearn Bank’s latest filing, on Oct. 1, Stearns Bank proposed the financial advisory firm Cordes & Co. to be the receiver of HmongTown Marketplace. If approved, the company has the power to hire or terminate employees, change the locks on the property, establish pay rates for employees and collect rent. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 24 at 9 a.m. via Zoom for a Hennepin County judge to decide on the matter.

Stearns Bank’s Director of Marketing Sarah Cords and an attorney representing the bank, Andrew Steil, declined to comment.

Boiling point

Xiong filed counterclaims to the lawsuit on Oct. 6.

“We’re actively discussing ways to get out of the lawsuit without a trial,” said Tim Maher, the attorney representing Xiong.

“But banks don’t want to own property, they don’t want to be landlords, they want to lend money … If we find a way to resolve it, they’re not going to want HmongTown Marketplace,” Maher added.

Xiong alleges in the counterclaims that Stearns Bank defrauded him by promising a loan for construction to renovate the Sears property, demanded that he use his family’s house as collateral to acquire loans, and threatened to foreclose on HmongTown Marketplace if he didn’t agree to sign forbearance forms, acknowledging his loans went into default.

Xiong purchased the Sears property in November 2023 for $5.25 million. He said he agreed to build a Stearns Bank branch in HmongTown Marketplace, and included a branch in his plans for the Sears property. But he said he immediately hit roadblocks.

Xiong said he went to Stearns Bank three times with designs for the 181,500 square-feet Sears property, but the bank rejected all of them.

“They said you need to go back to your architecture people and your construction people to scale it down,” he said. “That was really much of 2024.”

Xiong said he attempted to lower the costs of renovations by hiring an independent contractor to conduct a feasibility study, and by taking out some of the design elements.

“I think they set me [up] for failure,” he told Sahan Journal. “They say they’re helping the Hmong community, but acting that way, they’re not supporting the Hmong community.”

“This is my life, my livelihood,” he said. “When we started this one, my wife and I were very young. We were in our early 30s.”

Xiong said he could no longer pay property taxes due to mounting financial pressure from the loans. Since May 2024, he owes Ramsey County more than $550,000 in property taxes, including interest and late fees.

The effort to keep the Sears property afloat is draining the development of HmongTown Marketplace. Starting in 2024, Xiong said, he had to start pulling money from HmongTown Marketplace to make payments on the Sears loan. Xiong said he had planned to replace wooden structures for the outdoors farmers’ market, resurface the parking lot and renovate the facade of the marketplace facing Como Avenue.

“Because of the cash flow that has been consumed over at the Sears [site], we’re not able to do anything,” he said. “We’re just trying to survive.”

Heart of the community

Yuepheng Xiong, who manages Hmong ABC, a small bookstore in the HmongTown Marketplace, said he has developed friendships with other vendors over the years. The bookstore has been at the marketplace since 2010, he added.

“I don’t know exactly how many vendors are here, but we don’t know where we would go. It’s a big community inside HmongTown here,” he said.

Yuepheng Xiong said he began to worry about HmongTown Marketplace after he heard about the Sears expansion project at Maplewood Mall.

“It’s no big surprise, but we’re sad about the news; it made us feel uneasy,” he said of reaction to the lawsuit. “Financially, we’re concerned that they’ve spread themselves too thin, between here and what they called Hmongtown 2. We’re concerned how they’ll manage two places, and still be able to maintain this building and support us here.”

Some of the vendors told Sahan Journal that they see some of the worn-out parts of the marketplace, but they also don’t want someone they don’t know to replace Xiong as the owner.

“We feel that it’s off from the heart of the community,” Yuepheng Xiong said of the Maplewood location. “I don’t see anybody moving from here to Maplewood.”

Pang Lee, a food vendor at the marketplace since 2018, said the loss of the center will harm the community, especially elders.

“If it closes down, it definitely will affect them,” because they won’t have a place where they can freely shop in Hmong without worrying about needing an interpreter, she said.

She also said there was a noticeable drop in customers immediately after the lawsuit was announced, and she saw online rumors spread that the marketplace was closing down.

“We’ve been here for so long, and so many people know about us — like the whole state of Minnesota,” she said. “I think just being the first place, that just makes us so much more special. When you think about the Hmong community, you think about HmongTown.”

Shoppers Xee Chang and her 17-year-old daughter Aryel Xiong told Sahan Journal that they come to the marketplace three or four times a month.

“I also think it’d be really weird to not have it, because there’s a lot of Hmong kids around our age, and older than us, who grew up coming here a lot for whatever is around here,” Aryel said. “So if they weren’t here, then basically our childhood is gone.”

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.