‘This is home now.’ Have a look at Asia Pacific Cultural Center’s new building
When Faaluaina “Lua” Pritchard first took on the role as executive director of Tacoma’s Asia Pacific Cultural Center in 2010, she had a staff of two people.
Her family and the family of her staff members pitched in to run the center back then. Her husband was the center’s first grant writer, plumber and IT specialist. Her children and the children of the two staff members were the setup and cleanup crew for any event they hosted.
Fast forward to August 2025: the Asia Pacific Cultural Center, or APCC, now operates out of an 18,500-square-foot building and is home to 45 employees.
“Now [my family] are asking me, ‘Grandma, mom, why aren’t you asking us to do this and to do that anymore?’ Because I have staff now. I have staff, and so I can pay other people to do it,” Pritchard told The News Tribune last week.
The APCC has served Tacoma’s Asian and Pacific Islander community since 1996 and in 2000 moved into its first office space – 150 square feet at the Tacoma Convention Center. It has been in search of a larger and more permanent home since then, but the search is finally over.
On Aug. 29, the APCC hosted a grand opening to unveil its new center at 4851 South Tacoma Way. The new building includes an art gallery, a gift shop, a larger performance hall with dressing rooms, and meeting rooms.
“This is home now,” Pritchard said.
It also includes a library that’s free and open to the community to borrow books about the Asian and Pacific Islander community. Pritchard said Tacoma Library staff members have been guiding APCC staff on best practices for organizing and lending. The new building also has a commercial kitchen, and she said they’re planning to launch a new culinary and entrepreneurship program next year to teach people about Asia Pacific cuisine and about how to start restaurants serving such food.
Pritchard said she’s also excited that the new building means her staff will have much more expansive office space where each employee has their own desk, computer and more – instead of being spread out across the building.
“We didn’t have this [before],” she said. “We only had one room, which I was in, and then another tiny room.”
APCC had originally envisioned a center that featured some element of senior housing, Pritchard added. But the group rents the land that the center is on from Parks Tacoma, and Parks Tacoma officials told the group that it only could have a cultural center on the grounds. So the APCC set to work along with the Low Income Housing Institute on a 77-unit affordable housing project in Tacoma’s Lincoln District called Patsy Surh Place, which was unveiled in May.
“This project, you can mark my words, will be a model for senior housing,” Pritchard said at the time, The News Tribune reported. “Because it is our culture to take care of our elders.”
The new building project was the result of $18.5 million from a mix of grant funding and private donors. Grant funders and donors include the city of Tacoma, Pierce County, the state of Washington and groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Puget Sound Energy.
Work on the project began in 2023, and two years later the new building is ready for business. Pritchard said she was only expecting 600 people to attend the grand opening in late August – but over 3,000 people showed up.
“I only expected like 600 people,” she said. “Really, I only ordered 600 chairs.”
Leaders from around the state wrote to offer their congratulations and support, including Gov. Bob Ferguson and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
“Your amazing stories, souls and cultures now have an even more beautiful home with the new Asia Pacific Cultural Center on South Tacoma Way,” Ferguson wrote.
Now in the new space, Pritchard said the group is aiming to host a separate event in celebration of each of the 47 countries that it serves, including Filipino Day, Indonesia Day and more.
“Our year is already planned and full,” she said.
Visit www.asiapacificculturalcenter.org to learn more about the new building and upcoming events.
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 5:15 AM.
