‘Local supports local’: Tacoma neighborhood welcomes thrift shop seeking a fresh start
Tacoma’s Fern Hill Business District is a tight community that you can take in visually by standing at Park Avenue and 84th Street.
That corner is home to a colorful, iconic wall mural welcoming people to the district. It’s painted on the exterior wall of what once was Best Foam & Fabric Outlet, in business for more than four decades.
When the longtime shop closed, its neighbors were keenly aware of the loss.
“I was saddened,” Shawn Tibbitts, chef-owner of Tibbitts@FernHill and vice president of the business district told The News Tribune via email. “They were there 40 years, and as a child I went to the Fern Hill school across the street when they just opened.”
Storefront vacancies can languish in lower-profile areas such as Fern Hill.
But not this time.
The location checked all the boxes for Michael Kennish and his family, who were looking to move their thrift shop business from Federal Way. With the help of Kennish’s inlaws, they were able to buy the building and open Hoarders Attic Thrift Shop.
“It was amazing timing to open a secondhand store in Fern Hill,” Tibbitts said. “I’ve seen a lot of new folks who aren’t from the area go in and out of Hoaders Attic. It’s a definite need in our business district because we can attract a new crowd and keep it a small business community.”
The building offered not only a good location but also an apartment that Kennish’s 18-year-old stepson, Shaun, eventually can live in when, the family hopes, he takes over the front of the store in the next few years. The plan is for his brother to help to run the store and take care of the paperwork.
Shaun was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 2, and the business his family has rallied around will give him a home and security after Kennish and wife, Kristy, are no longer around.
To help him prepare for running the store, Sean is in an employment transition program with the Federal Way School District.
The Kennish said Shaun showed an early interest in thrift sales when he was 14 and the family was focused raising money from garage sales for their sons’ Boy Scouts activities.
“We asked him, ‘How’d you like to sell this stuff in a store?’” Kennish recalled. “His eyes got as big as saucers and he said, ‘That would be fun!’”
The family started the business by bidding on the contents of storage units for inventory. They came across eight units and wound up winning seven of them.
“We thought we’d get one,” Kennish recalled.
That haul overwhelmed the space in their house, so they opened a store in Federal Way “sooner than we anticipated.”
The shop’s roof collapsed, Kennish said, so they moved to a second location in the same shopping center. That store one had a sewage leak.
It was time to move.
The Tacoma location totals 6,000 square feet, and offers “large sales floor, storage and warehouse area in the back,” Kennish said.
“And I can park my box truck back there,” he added.
The family has already felt the support of its new neighbors.
Just after the family arrived the building’s mural was tagged.
“The neighbors in the house down the street and two of the business owners across the street were cleaning it up the day after it happened,” Kennish said.
The family still lives in Federal Way, but Kennish has been staying overnight at the shop a few times a week to save gas — “My truck gets about 12 miles a gallon,” he said.
“I volunteer my time here,” Kennish said. “But since we’ve moved here, we’ve actually been doing a lot better than we were doing (in Federal Way).”
Shaun works at the store three weekends a month, and will spend more time at the shop during the holidays and the summer.
The store accepts small donations for sale during business hours.
“All I ask is for people to be respectful,” Kennish said. “I’m not like Goodwill — all I’ve got is a trash can same as you. So I have to be picky about what we accept.”
So far, he said, his favorite items — from the days of bidding at storage auctions — are Lalique statues, crystal figurines from the Art Deco movement.
As for what’s next, Kennish is considering a small setup in store to offer the neighborhood a place to buy convenience store-type items — sodas, snacks, sports drinks, toiletries.
“We’re open late enough it might benefit them,” he said of his neighbors.
The family has joined the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce and had their official ribbon cutting Saturday (Dec. 8). Shaun cut the ribbon.
City Council members Lillian Hunter and Chris Beale attended along with Chamber President and CEO Tom Pierson.
“This is my neighborhood,” Hunter said at the ceremony. “I actually was raised in this area.”
She said she’d already checked out the store’s inventory.
“I’ve got my eye on a couple of things in there and I’m ready to start shopping,” she said.
As Tibbitts noted: “Local supports local!”
Hoarders Attic thrift shop
Address: 8328 S. Park Ave., Tacoma.
Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday.
Online sales: Links to its eBay store, OfferUp, Letgo and Craigslist at https://thehoardersattic.com/online-sales
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHoardersAttic/
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 1:50 PM.
