By Asia Armour
Special to The Medium
Quincy Jones met Ray Charles for the first time at the Rocking Chair jazz club on Jackson Street in Seattle. About a mile from where they played the blues, the Liberty Bank Building (LBB) stands with formidable pride.
Broad strokes of oranges, purples and reds paint the wall above the main lobby. In the artwork, curated by local Black artists at Al Doggett Studios, notes from a saxophone-playing musician inspire a woman to dance.
The building, located on 24th and Union in the Central District of Seattle, is a six-story collaborative between Capitol Hill Housing (CHH), Africatown Community Land Trust, the Black Community Impact Alliance (BCIA) and Byrd Barr Place designed to solidify the African American footprint in the area for years to come. With 115 apartment units and a ground floor commercial space for up to three small businesses, the new development is designed to provide affordable housing and foster community empowerment.
During a ribbon cutting ceremony held last Saturday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said the building represents the “brilliance and resilience of the Black community” by providing a space for the future of Black wealth, ownership and culture.
The project is seen dually by many members of the African American community as a homage to the past and a step towards the future.
The building’s namesake, Liberty Bank, was established on the same plot in 1968. As the first Black-owned financial institution in the Pacific Northwest, the Bank aimed to combat disinvestment and redlining in Central Seattle. It “represented resilience and empowerment as an example of a community’s solution to systemic, institutional racism.”
According to CEO Chris Persons, when CHH first acquired the property from KeyBank in 2012, community leaders, many of whom were essential in the success of this project, mobilized to preserve the space and stop development.
Originally, these leaders saw the project as another attempt to push African Americans out of the community and erase the history of the site.
For decades, the Census Bureau and the Nielson Co. have tracked a downward spiral in African American occupancy of the CD. In 1970, Black people comprised 73 percent of the Central area’s population. In the 2010 census, that number had dwindled to 23 percent.
Kibibi Monie, Executive Director of the Nu Black Arts West Theatre, grew up in the CD and witnessed firsthand the striking impact of gentrification.
Ten years ago, Monie took a walk down 23rd Ave., from Jackson to Cherry, and was shocked that there was “not one” Black person in sight. The disappearance of her neighbors “grew like a rolling stone gathering moss.”
“I’m very disappointed that Seattle, a city built on diversity, would deny that to be our strength as it has been in the past,” she said.
Monie said when people are displaced, when they witness the home they’ve always known become a city they don’t recognize, they lose more than that physical space.
“You get the sense that you don’t belong,” she said.
According to K. Wyking Garrett, President and CEO of Africatown, the most difficult junction of the project to cross was the threshold of knowledge.
In the beginning, according to Garrett, CHH didn’t know the rich history of the CD or understand the systemic institutions that continue to drive Black people out of these neighborhoods.
“There was a lot of learning [CHH] had [to do],” Garrett said. “For a large, White institution to embrace a new way of doing things, who had [always done] things a certain way, was a challenge for them.
“But we are glad they have been learning, adjusting and embracing the values put forth by Africatown,” added Garrett.
Persons agreed, and also spoke to changing tides.
“Overtime, from this rivalry an unlikely partnership was forged in the foundry of anger and love, despair and hope,” he said. “This partnership is co-equally responsible for the monument that you see standing before you today.”
In order to progress the vision these community leaders had for the development, the partners created a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to follow like a “North Star,” said Persons.
According to Persons, the MOU addressed three main points: ownership, business development and residential diversity. After a 15-year tax credit compliance period associated with the project, ownership of the building will transfer from CHH to Byrd Barr Place and Africatown. In addition, they already have signed lease agreement with three local businesses to occupy the ground level retail space, and a majority of the initial residential lease holders are African American.
“We have signed agreements with three African American small businesses to occupy the ground floor retail: Cafe Avole, Earl’s Cuts and That Brown Girl Cooks,” said Persons. “And… through an intentional affirmative marketing program, we’ve ensured that 87 percent of the residential lease holders are African American. Reclaiming this corner and this community as a hub of the African American diaspora.”
Persons said they also prioritized the use of local and minority subcontractors in the construction process by dedicating a higher percentage of the $16.7 million available for contract work to Women and Minority Business and Enterprises (WMBEs).
“[We hired] women- and minority-firms that do plumbing and construction networks in the project,” Persons said. “Typically, you would see five percent goals. We achieved 31 percent [utilization goals on this project].”
Seventeen percent, or $2.9 million dollars, went specifically to Black-owned firms.
Dr. Marcia Tate Arunga, storyteller and the vibrant master of ceremonies, has a deeply-rooted connection to these streets. Her father was a real estate broker in the CD, and she herself owned and lived above her clothing store on Jackson Street.
She referred to the completion of this initiative as an effort to build the CD, not save it.
“We can build the Central Area and make it better than it was before, because that’s what we do,” said Arunga. “We live in the tradition of Queen Hatshepsut of Ancient Egypt, who said, ‘I am here to restore that which is in ruin, to make it better than it was before.’”
“Being back in the Central Area is to restore it in creative ways,” she added. “Our music, our spoken word, our performance, cannot be compared to any other culture. It’s why people want to be here. It’s important we continue to stake a claim in our communities.”
Garrett agreed, and said it’s more about creating a future from the legacy of the past.
“We don’t want to just become museum pieces in a community where we [still] are,” Garrett said. “Building means making sure we have a future that honors the past, that builds on and continues the legacy that our parents and grandparents established. It gives our children and their children an opportunity to take it forward.”
“We don’t want to just have a Jimi Hendrix monument,” Garrett continued. “We want to have a studio where a young Jimi Hendrix, a young Quincy Jones can bring his brilliance forward. [We want] a young William Grose [to become] the next developer, a young Helen Coleman as [the next restaurateur].”
More than anything, the community leadership that springboarded this campaign understands the vitality of maintaining ownership.
To have a voice, to thrive, or to just simply exist, a people need a place.
