Getting there wasn’t pretty, but saving the Portland Avenue Community Center a win for East Side

It started out on the wrong foot, making it more difficult and contentious than it should have been.

For the better part of two years, maybe even longer, the fate of the Portland Avenue Community Center and the park that surrounds it remained perilously uncertain.

Would it be sold off by Metro Parks Tacoma to help pay for the shiny new Eastside Community Center, two miles up the road?

Would the park be maintained but the modest community center lost?

Now, finally, we have a resolution — and it’s one that should inspire a cautious sigh of relief from Tacoma’s East Side.

Last week, Metro Parks reached a lease agreement with the nonprofit Korean Women’s Association.

The deal means KWA will take over operation of the community center and includes important safeguards to ensure the center will offer critical services for years to come.

At the same time, Metro Parks has committed to keeping the park a park, even vowing to invest in improvements in the near future.

That’s not just the right decision, it’s a no-brainer.

Getting to this point didn’t have to be as hard as it was, needlessly keeping the community on edge. For Metro Parks, the importance of maintaining both the park and the services offered at the community center should have been obvious from the beginning.

But the truly important thing is where things stand today.

“We made some missteps in the beginning, but I feel like we did the right thing by stopping the process and doing a restart,” said Dave Lewis, Deputy Director of Parks & Recreation. “It look much longer than we thought, but I think we’ve got the best outcome possible.”

People who use the community center and park repeatedly said keeping the center open and accessible was a must. That’s just what the deal accomplishes.

Neighbors repeatedly objected to the possibility of affordable housing being built on the site. Metro Parks scrapped the idea.

People didn’t want the community center to be sold, ever, so the 50-year lease — which includes annual check-ins to ensure KWA is holding up its end of the deal — doesn’t include an option to buy.

In the end, Metro Parks did what it’s supposed to do — listen to the people it serves.

In KWA, it seems to have found an ideal partner to make the vision a reality.

According to KWA executive director Troy Christensen, the nonprofit has committed to providing services like meals and programming for seniors, meeting space for the public and parking — all of which were identified as priorities during community outreach efforts.

KWA also plans to offer access to medical, food and housing benefits, connections to in-home care for seniors and the disabled as well as a domestic violence advocate.

There’s even talk of partnering with a local food bank to help ease the East Side’s lack of nutritional options.

Finally, a soon-to-be-formed community advisory board will assist KWA in crafting much-needed youth programming.

All of these services will be available to everyone, Christensen says, and free of charge.

He hopes everything will be fully operation by mid-2019.

“As we’ve gone through this process, we’ve spent a lot of time with the community, and we’ve heard what they’re interested in and what they want,” Christensen said. “Now, we’re going to work with them to figure out what are the best services for that neighborhood.”

“We’re always looking for ways to invest in the East Side. It’s where we started 46 years ago. It’s where our roots are,” he added. “We think it deserves more investment than it’s getting.”

That’s an understatement and one that likely underscores why residents like Stephanie Smith — who spearheaded the grassroots effort to keep the park and community center — are taking a cautious, wait-and-see approach.

Though Smith says she’s hopeful KWA will be able to deliver, she admits that the process that has led to this point — and the path Metro Parks has taken in getting here — left her wary.

“Obviously, I hope this all works out,” Smith said, “because we really don’t have a lot of options at this point.”

While the skepticism feels warranted, here’s hoping Smith — and others — are ultimately won over by what the new deal delivers.

If a win is what the final score shows, Smith and the neighborhood she calls home will have earned it.

“I give the community a lot of credit for standing up,” Lewis said.

“That’s our job, listening to the community.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2018 at 5:16 PM.