New life for Hilltop Rite Aid property? New owners have big plans for the troubled site
A property in the heart of Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood has been purchased by a partnership of organizations that promises to develop affordable housing meant for people who have historically lived in the neighborhood.
On Jan. 23, Homestead Community Land Trust and Aya Community Land Trust hosted several partners and community leaders to celebrate the $4.2 million acquisition of the former Rite Aid on 1105 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards said the property has long been associated with broken promises made by developers who talked of buying the property and reinvesting in the neighborhood.
Woodards told The News Tribune that before the former Rite Aid was purchased by its previous owners, who allowed it to serve as artist studio space for the Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center, it sat empty and unused.
She said the owners of the closed Rite Aid allowed the property to sit “fallowed” for a nearly decade as she was told they were making more money by it sitting empty than they would if they sold it.
A property sitting empty as a blight while someone that does not live there makes a profit from it is exactly what the Homestead and Aya Community Land Trusts are trying prevent in Hilltop.
Homestead Community Land Trust was founded in 1992 by a small collection of activists. It follows a land-trust model created by civil rights leaders in the 1960s and 1970s to prevent the displacement of historically marginalized communities by becoming collective owners and stewards of affordable housing. Homestead manages a trust of 257 homes in King County.
Aya Community Land Trust was founded to address growing displacement and housing challenges faced by the Hilltop neighborhood.
“We want to be very clear, Homestead has acquired this property with the intent of holding it on behalf of the community and with the intent of engaging the community to determine what will be built here,” Homestead’s president of the Board of Delegates, Cherryl Jackson-Williams, said during the Jan. 23 event.
Homestead and the stewards of the newly acquired property plan to use 2025 to do community outreach, collect feedback and start a dialogue on what will be built there, who will build it and who will occupy it.
“We are centering the voice of those who have been left out of the conversation when it comes to housing affordability and equity and access,” Jackson-Williams said.
Brendon Nelson is one of the founding directors of Aya Community Land Trust. During the Jan. 23 event, Nelson said he grew up right down the street. His family moved to the Hilltop neighborhood from Texas when he was a young child.
In the late 1990s, Nelson’s family was displaced from the neighborhood. He remembers his father being told by the landlord that he would rent to his family but not sell property to them.
Nelson said it is ending these kinds of housing injustices that inspires him to do the work he does today.
“We know this is a historically Black neighborhood,” Nelson said. “And our Black community has been pushed away.”
During the Jan. 23 event, Homestead CEO Kathleen Hosfeld promised accountability to the community. She acknowledged the history of broken promises made by developers and emphasized the need to rebuild trust through the listening process.
She also acknowledged that mistakes will likely be made during the community-informed development process and assured that her organization would take responsibility and address them as they occur.
“This will not happen overnight,” she said of the long road ahead.
While the plans for what the property will become are yet to be determined, a Tacoma ordinance dictates that it must be developed with affordable housing.
According to Homestead, the property is anticipated to be able to support a minimum of 100 homes and would have space for commercial use.
Hosfeld said the property was purchased with funding assistance from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. Pierce County also contributed $200,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding from the federal government.
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
