Manitou Community Center in South Tacoma is on shaky ground now, but at least that’s better than in 2005. Back then, it was doomed.
Metro Parks announced plans that April to close the buildings. District officials had applied for a grant to build a new community center 10 blocks away, next to the new Gray Middle School campus.
If they got the grant, they promised, they’d tailor the center to the neighborhood’s needs.
The district already had cut funding to Manitou’s recreation, afterschool and art programs. It declared that the older half of the building, dating to 1924 and now used for storage, was beyond saving. The occupied wing, built in 1956, was shabby and had a bad roof.
But the place refused to die.
Girl Scouts, day care, art, sewing and martial arts classes went on.
Irate users knew better than to give up what they had before they could walk through the doors of their promised new center.
They packed meetings and threatening to campaign against park district bond measures if the board took Manitou from them.
It worked. Metro Parks agreed to a rental and repair agreement with tenants, including Kids Korner Day Care & Preschool.
The protesters were right to mistrust the promise. The grant fell through.
Had they shut up and trusted, the neighbors would have been without even a modest community center for seven years.
Metro Parks listened to the people and learned from its mistake.
When the district asked voters if they were willing to be taxed to build that new center, Manitou users, including artists from all over Tacoma, campaigned for a bond measure. Voters approved it, and the South Tacoma Activity and Recreation (STAR) Center will open this spring as part of a 75-acre campus.
Metro Parks has done this project well. It conducted a survey on what South Tacomans wanted in a rec center, then built the center around those preferences.
It collaborated with Tacoma Public Schools’ Gray Middle School and the adjacent Boys and Girls Club Topping Regional Hope Center to share facilities and programs.
For example, the school and club have a computer lab and two gyms each, so the STAR center doesn’t duplicate them. STAR, however, will have a demonstration kitchen for classes on how to cook from community gardens and South Tacoma Farmer’s Market that are moving to the campus.
Metro Parks officials hope the model of sharing without duplicating will transfer across town to First Creek Middle School and the adjacent Swan Creek Park and nearby Tacoma Housing Authority.
But Manitou doesn’t fit, in part because Metro Parks does not want to maintain or be liable for the old building.
It gave Manitou backers time to find money to buy it. Frank Blair, who manages the place, was leading the effort until his daughter, Sheena, was killed by a drunken driver in 2010. Understandably, his focus has shifted.
As the STAR Center opening nears, Shon Sylvia of Metro Parks has been asking people who live near the old Manitou center what they do and don’t want on the site. They don’t want a big apartment complex amid their single-family homes. They’re OK with a nonprofit buying the building for a headquarters. But, really, they want to keep it as a community asset.
If it goes, they told Sylvia at a public meeting Wednesday, they will lose Kids’ Korner, a blessing in the moderate-income neighborhood.
If it goes, Ginny Eberhardt said, they will lose studio space used by artists from all over town.
Manitou’s art space is so important to Tacoma, Eberhardt said, that the West End Neighborhood Council is interested in preserving it. The group doesn’t have the $450,000-$600,000 Metro Parks sees as a reasonable price. But the building does generate rental income and might find more paying users.
Eberhardt proposed more collaboration among arts groups, foundations, Kids Korner, Metro Parks and the city. With time, and a friendly sales plan from the park district, Manitou Community Center might yet be saved as one of Tacoma’s grittier assets.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
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