Photos by Sierra Hartman
You’ve heard it a thousand times:
1. Landlord leaves building empty
2. Community transforms vacant building into desperately needed music venue, cultural center, arts space, making neighborhoods safer and bringing much needed support to working families.
3. Landlord sells building. Community venue is lost. Cost of living goes up.
It’s a tale as old as our town, and the stakes have gotten higher.
Thankfully there’s a solution: Legalize ownership.
If we allow community organizations to leverage city funding to purchase their spaces permanently, non-profits can spend less money on rent and maximize the impact of our resources. The funds are already there, but some gatekeepers have organized against it, and as a result we might lose one of our strongest opportunities to preserve arts spaces for future generations. So let’s take a moment to talk about the Community Ownership Amendment and what it could mean for Tacoma.
This summer Platinum Reign Studios closed indefinitely. Platinum Reign was a recording studio and a labor of love which for over 20 years has launched musical talents in our city, spearheaded by a man named Ruford Henderson, who offered highly subsidized music studio time for creatives in our city and kickstarting the careers of dozens of Black and brown recording artists. The space shuttered on a month’s notice. Why? Because the landlord saw a critical opportunity to make more money, and sold the building out from under them.
Years ago FABITAT was in the same position. Our landlord, who owns numerous buildings in Tacoma, sat down with Kenji Stoll and myself saying “We can’t rationalize what we are doing to you all but unfortunately you have to leave.” His niece had a pet project, called Grit City Baking Co. And she wanted our location. After 6 years serving youth and families with a drop-in art center, hosting free community arts events, throwing block parties, concerts, dance competitions, and offering no-cost space to other groups who needed our spot, we were forced to make way. And that block of Hilltop has never been the same.
The price of commercial real estate in Tacoma has increased significantly in recent years. In the fight for creative space, our city is losing. Aside from valiant efforts geared towards individual organizations, our arts community hasn’t gotten together to develop any permanent solutions.
Remember when Spaceworks launched in 2010? Over the past 15 years our city’s flagship creative incubator managed to seed nearly everything we still celebrate about Tacoma’s creative scene—Tinkertopia, ETC Tacoma, Rotator Creative, Spun Clay Art Studio, Tacoma Tool Library, Grit City Grindhouse, Write253 and more. The irony is that while so many of its fruits are still with us, the program itself has been left without the support it needs to keep offering our community its most transformative resource: space.
The 950 Gallery Spaceworks created that showcased local artists downtown? Gone. The 1120 Broadway co-working space that hosted events while housing 35 artists and small creative businesses? Gone. The retail residency program that gave creative entrepreneurs six months to test their models and activate vacant properties? Gone. Spaceworks Tacoma has been so starved of financial support and partnerships that they are no longer able to perform the service they were created for: growing our city by supporting creative small businesses with space.. If we want to keep Tacoma creative, we’ve got to wake up.
Hell’s Kitchen, The Warehouse, The Graffiti Garages, Tacoma Art Place, 950 Gallery, The Swiss, DASH Center for the Performing Arts, Manitou Arts Center, Club Zoe, The Tempest, The Helm, Two Vaults Gallery, The Monsoon Room, TAC25, Sky Movement, One Heart Cafe, Fab-5 HQ, Breaker Studio, Brick House Gallery, Parable Bookstore—arts spaces, gallery spaces, studio spaces, gathering spaces, music spaces, poetry spaces, dance spaces, maker spaces, youth spaces, performance spaces. All tragic losses, all valiant testaments to the power of our community, all disappeared before our eyes.
Tacoma’s down to one all ages venue, one non-profit gallery, and maybe one legitimate place where you can dance on Friday nights. The most sobering words come from the late Matt Driscoll, “Tacoma touts its artistic credentials proudly, but when it comes to sustaining essential arts and music spaces—and creative endeavors of similar, community-building motivations—the City of Destiny has regularly come up short.”
Finally there is a tangible answer on the table. It’s called Community Ownership. So let’s talk about it.
It’s up for a vote with the city council next week and it’s quite simple. We invest a small portion of our annual arts funding (6%) into supporting small organizations to permanently own their spaces. This is a win-win for our community. It means less of our already small budgets going to landlords, so we can leverage our programming to address real community needs.
The Community Ownership Amendment is an upgrade to Tacoma’s Arts Funding Stream (Tacoma Creates) that:
– Removes barriers to ownership for arts/culture/science/heritage organizations who are seeking to preserve and build venues and creative spaces in the city
– Creates a funding stream within Tacoma Creates that offers small organizations an opportunity to permanently own their spaces
– Ensures that small organizations who are facing critical repairs necessary to keep their programs running have opportunities to access capital
Some arts leaders have retaliated against this proposal out of fears that this amendment will cut away funds from programming. This reaction unfortunately coincides with a major disconnect in our city, between the communities most impacted by our escalating affordability crisis and the demographics of Tacoma’s non-profit leadership. When it comes to displacement, the truth is some populations are hit harder than others. But make no mistake, the lack of community ownership impacts each and every one of us, and this crisis will only escalate.
I’ve been meeting with folks to try and understand the dissent. These are the most common responses:
“Putting money into capital takes funds away from programming”
This is incorrect.
Investing equitably in ownership enables small groups to leverage their programming dollars more effectively. It takes money back from landlords who would much rather own everything and force us to pay the rents they demand. Investing in permanent community ownership means that Tacoma’s culture and creativity is not displaced.
Investing in ownership frees small organizations from the tyranny of landlords, it means programming dollars go further because small organizations are no longer rent burdened and can use subsequent dollars supporting our community.
Putting money into capital puts equity in our future and enables organizations to have room to focus on what matters most, which is the next generation.
“6% is too daunting of a budget for city staff to manage, lets do 3% now and increase to 6% in the next reauthorization.”
This is the most tone-deaf response of all, especially for communities being impacted with rising rents year after year. But here’s the math: Real estate costs in Tacoma have gone up significantly since Tacoma Creates was authorized in 2018. And the cost of rent has gone up with it. Waiting until 2032 to seriously invest in ownership while property costs skyrocket weakens the value of each tax dollar spent. We may as well throw that money in the trash.
Here’s a better answer: We need the council to authorize the full 6% capital expenditure now, as in yesterday. The city can still roll this out equitably. But legalizing the full 6% is the only solution that gives city staff the headroom necessary to respond to the challenge we’re facing. Waiting 7 more years is a waste of time, money, and space, and risks pricing small groups out permanently.
“Supporting Capital Expenditures is Going to increase inequities in funds”
Now this is something worth discussing. Did you know that 49.1% of Tacoma Create’s funds go to just 10 organizations? LeMay Car Museum ($266,000), Tacoma Art Museum ($266,000), Tacoma Arts Live ($366,000), Tacoma Musical Playhouse ($266,393), Hilltop Artists ($269,859), Mi Centro ($297,475), The Grand Cinema ($336,327), Greentrike ($346,000), Museum of Glass ($366,000), and Asia Pacific Cultural Center ($386,000)
Aside from Mi Centro, All of these organizations signed a letter calling on the city council to vote against the Community Ownership Amendment.
Now don’t get me wrong. Fundraising sucks and it’s difficult for everyone. But the truth is, large orgs have massive advantages over small groups in Tacoma to access capital. They can access consultants to manage major funding campaigns, they can access financing, get pre-development dollars, and they can leverage their networks to open doors for state funds. It’s not the large groups that need to be our primary focus right now.
It’s the small organizations that are at the greatest risk of displacement in our city. It’s the smaller orgs that need support with acquiring locations to run their programs. If we’re serious about equity, Community Ownership funds must prioritize grassroots efforts led by historically marginalized groups. If we’re serious about equity we should prioritize community groups most impacted by displacement, and support them to own their spaces. The current answer: keeping small arts groups locked out of ownership and stuck as perpetual renters does not help our city, does not help our families, and does not help our children.
No matter how you slice it, Community Ownership is what’s needed to keep arts alive in a rampant housing crisis. So much so that our neighbors to the north have been using their arts tax to fund permanent ownership for years now. We should NEVER be losing to Seattle when it comes to grassroots cooperative action.
Lately it feels like a disgusting salad of rage-bait algorithms, pandemic amnesia, and zero-sum thinking has caused Tacoma’s arts leaders to forget where we come from. And maybe this short-sighted and misdirected infighting is actually a byproduct of the underlying problem: we haven’t had spaces to get together. Many leaders are angry and concerned about their individual budgets, which all of us understand, but Tacoma’s young people deserve leaders who will fight for not just our own budgets but for future generations. Tacoma’s young people deserve leaders who have the courage to remember their roots, who think and build collectively and come up with real, enduring solutions to our affordability crisis that secure community space for generations.
To Joshua Knudson, CEO of Management and Operations at Tacoma Arts Live—when a 13 year old, inspired by one of your concerts, wants to start a band, what venues will exist where they can perform for their friends?
To Tanya Durand, CEO of Greentrike—when a child who is inspired by one of your exhibits wants to build a robot, what free community spaces exist for them to get long term mentorship and support?
To Andy Maus, Executive Director of Tacoma Art Museum—When the 11 year old, inspired by one of your exhibitions, wants to be an artist, what community spaces actually exist to support their careers and showcase their talents?
Small arts venues are the answer to all of these questions and small grassroots organizations are the lifeblood of Tacoma’s arts and culture. Without small, community driven arts orgs and venues, our big budget organizations have no real purpose. If as leaders we are truly committed to our mission, we have a responsibility to confront the barriers that exist for our audiences beyond our doors. In fact, that is where the most important work has to happen.
But the most important message here is to Tacoma’s people. If we are serious about our future we have to get our hands dirty and fight for community ownership NOW. We’re kneecapping all of our community by allowing a few CEOs to restrict access to funds and thus ownership in this city.. For the next decade, we need to work collectively, to acquire as many independent, non-profit venues as possible across this city, with Black and brown community groups—populations who are experiencing the brunt of Tacoma’s displacement crisis—leading the way.
One thing for certain is that pouring millions of dollars of rent into landlord pockets with no long term strategy doesn’t work. Community Ownership is not just about keeping existing things afloat, it’s about banking the land that will affect our city’s future. Next Tuesday Tacoma has a decision to make and this decision is going to affect generations of what’s possible in Tacoma.
At the end of the day, Tacoma Creates doesn’t exist to serve arts leaders. Tacoma Creates exists to serve the people of Tacoma. It was designed before we had a global pandemic that gutted our cultural spaces and venues, it was designed before the cost of real estate doubled in our city, and it was designed to be adapted in response to community needs. Tacoma Creates needs to be adapted now to respond to the reality of what Tacoma’s creative communities are facing.
If you care about community ownership and you want City Council to take action:
• Email your council members and tell them to vote YES on the community ownership Tacoma Creates capital addition update. Share your own stories about why stable and consistent community space for arts, culture, heritage, and science programming matters to you.
• Talk to your friends, family, and neighbors about what’s happening and encourage them to get involved—every voice counts.
• Show up at the September 30th council meeting, 5:00 PM at City Hall (or online) for public comment when this addition is being discussed. Testify or stand in support—being present makes a difference.
• Share on social media about the opportunity we have and tag City Council members to let them know where you stand
