The Cultural Space Agency's And Cultivate South Park Announce 'El Barrio' Acquisition

Cultivate South Park and the Cultural Space Agency have announced their successful purchase of Four Properties in the Very Heart of South Park including South Park Hall, South Park Idea Lab, Resistencia Coffee and their permanent preservation as Community-Owned Cultural Space.

Following a year of negotiation, partnership-building, and fundraising, the Cultural Space Agency and Cultivate South Park are proud to announce the creation of their partnership, El Barrio, and their purchase of over 32,000 square feet of the heart of South Park's historic commercial district.

With this acquisition, and through the creation of the El Barrio Community Trust, the two groups will secure the permanent community ownership of the beloved historic cultural space known as the South Park Hall; the community-driven South Park Idea Lab (a co-working space for arts, cultural, and community groups in the neighborhood); and hyper-locally-owned microbusinesses such as Resistencia Coffee, Uncle Eddie's Public House, South Town Pie, Tasty's, T Kuttz, and Oswaldo's Hair Salon. The acquisition also includes over 15,000 square feet of outdoor event space, which hosts community celebrations and markets.

The two organizations have acquired the properties with support from the Strategic Investment Fund, as well as direct philanthropy from local supporters. "Millions of dollars of philanthropy have rushed into this opportunity," says Cultural Space Agency co-founder and interim director Matthew Richter. "This is the beginning of an era of wealth-building in historically underinvested areas, and we're going to help these communities gain some agency over the future of their neighborhoods. Extractive, exploitive market forces will not be welcome here."

"It's a new day in the neighborhood," says Cultivate South Park co-founder Coté Soerens. "The purchase of this property is a jubilee moment for South Park and a sign of hope for Seattle. It shows what's possible when residents organize to reclaim their communities and co-create a more equitable place with hope and care for everyone in the barrio."

Crystal Brown, executive director of Cultivate South Park, says "It is an absolute privilege to be gifted with the opportunity to steward an arts & cultural space in South Park for our amazing community, neighbors and Seattle as a whole! We have immense gratitude for the City of Seattle and to the private philanthropists who made this vision a reality."

This is the first time the South Park Hall, in its 100-year history, will be owned directly by the community it is designed to serve, through the creation of the El Barrio Community Trust, a mechanism for direct community investment in these properties. This purchase is one of the first cultural space acquisitions funded by the City of Seattle's Strategic Investment Fund. It will also be the first of many cultural space acquisitions that the Cultural Space Agency is partnering on this year.

"We are going to be here to celebrate these properties' 100th birthday," say the El Barrio founding partners, "and we are going to ensure their survival as thriving community-owned cultural spaces for at least another century."

The town of South Park was incorporated in 1902, and from its inception faced an uphill climb towards community health and any semblance of stability. It took almost a decade after its founding for the town to secure a source of clean drinking water (even though Seattle's and Georgetown's water mains flowed directly through South Park). Although annexed to Seattle in 1907, the neighborhood never received much of the benefit that being a part of a major metropolis should have afforded it.

In the mid-1960's this sleepy residential neighborhood was rezoned to be entirely industrial; a dystopic future that was only avoided by a mass protest staged by residents at City Hall.

In 2001 the neighborhood's river, the Duwamish, was declared "one of the most polluted places in the country" by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2010 its connection to the rest of the city was severed when the 14th Avenue Bridge was closed entirely for four years, starving the small commercial district almost completely out of business.

Today nearly one in three residents of South Park (28.3%) lives below the federal poverty line.

South Park has also grown into one of the densest Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in the region, with nearly half of the population identifying as Hispanic or Latine.

Since the bridge reopening in 2014, the heart of South Park's commercial district has seen an incredible resurgence. Locally-owned small and micro businesses line both sides of 14th Avenue, and a vibrant street life has returned.

With this return to vibrancy comes opportunity, and with opportunity comes the danger of exploitation and displacement.

Seeking to protect, and to build on, this community cohesion and celebration, a group of local organizers, including Coté Soerens and Tim Soerens, convened Cultivate South Park. Cultivate is a group of residents who share a passion for creating space for connection. They are dedicated to increasing neighbors' participation in the life of our neighborhood. They specialize in Asset Based Community Development, identifying, connecting, and celebrating the gifts already present in their neighborhood. Cultivate South Park lends infrastructure to neighbor-led projects.

In early 2020, Tim and Coté Soerens, on behalf of Cultivate, connected with the Cultural Space Agency's Matthew Richter to begin an exploration of what significant community-driven property investment and acquisition could look like in South Park. Together with the Space Agency, a new partnership was developed: El Barrio. El Barrio is the mechanism through which the neighbors will own this neighborhood.

A significant "seed" leadership gift of $2,300,000 from the Strategic Investment Fund allowed the group to secure the option on these properties. The Cultural Space Agency worked to leverage that City investment in the arts and cultural community, and in early 2022 another $3,500,000 was committed from private philanthropy.

The two groups, Cultivate South Park and the Cultural Space Agency, having secured the ownership of these incredible historic properties, will now offer opportunities for individuals in the neighborhood to invest alongside the El Barrio partnership, creating direct community ownership of cultural space in the heart of South Park.

El Barrio is a new partnership between two organizations: Cultivate South Park and The Cultural Space Agency.

This acquisition has been funded through the City of Seattle's Strategic Investment Fund and anonymously through independent private philanthropy.

Cultivate South Park is a resident-led Asset-Based Community Development organization identifying, connecting, and celebrating neighborhood gifts to co-create a more equitable South Park. Rooted in love and joy, they create innovative solutions in food, environmental, housing and economic justice.

Cultivate's leadership consists of South Park residents who share a passion for creating space for connection to increase neighbors' participation in the life of our neighborhood. They specialize in Asset-Based Community Development, identifying, connecting, and celebrating the gifts already present in our neighborhood. Cultivate South Park was established as a 501c3 non-profit organization to lend infrastructure to neighbor-led projects.

The Cultural Space Agency is a mission-driven cultural real estate development company, imagined, designed, and led by a diverse group of BIPOC cultural community members, and chartered by the City of Seattle in 2021. It is an intermediary between the worlds of commercial real estate development and community-based cultural operators. Chartered by the City of Seattle as a public development authority, it is autonomous and independent and driven by its values and its mission. It is dedicated to creating community wealth through an anti-racist lens, using cultural space, broadly defined, as its primary instrument.

Led by co-founder and interim executive director Matthew Richter, the organization has raised over $17 million in its first year to support acquisitions of cultural spaces in partnership with community-based cultural organizations.

The El Barrio acquisition is the first of a string of projects that the Space Agency will be announcing over the course of the coming months.

This purchase has been significantly funded through the City of Seattle's Strategic Investment Fund, a $30,000,000 fund designed to support Seattle organizations' acquisitions of real estate for community use. The Strategic Investment Fund, designed and operated by the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development, supported this acquisition project with a $2,300,000 award.

"The City is proud work with Cultivate South Park, the Cultural Space Agency, and the broader South Park community on this purchase," said Rico Quirindongo, Acting Director of the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development. "The community is developing an exciting vision for this property, including affordable housing, gathering and cultural space, and other permanent assets to serve neighborhood residents. The Strategic Investment Fund was developed to ensure that our diverse cultural communities will always have a home in Seattle. Many thanks to our Community Advisory Group and the City's interdepartmental team for your thoughtful leadership and getting this unprecedented funding into the hands of community."

Bruce Harrell, Mayor of Seattle, also had this to say: "Financial support from the City's Strategic Investment Fund is helping create a sustainable space for South Park residents that will drive new economic and cultural opportunities and build stronger communities. This is the kind of difference-making collaborative effort that's only possible when we bring together City government, local communities, and public-private-philanthropic partners as One Seattle."

This project is both about preservation and protection of cultural heritage, and about growth and the development of South Park's next phase of cultural identity.

We intend to make these properties safer. We will install a fire suppression sprinkler system. We will seismically reinforce these structures. We will increase air handling and air exchange and bring all of the buildings' systems into the 21st century. We intend to work to increase accessibility to these spaces.

Ultimately the neighborhood understands that a 15,000-square-foot surface parking lot, 30 feet from the heart of the South Park historic commercial core, is not the highest or best use of this land. The El Barrio partnership, together with the Seattle Office of Housing, is just beginning to explore what options for affordable housing and affordable cultural space on that site might look like. In the meantime, the site will continue both as parking for the local commercial hub, and as outdoor market space, as music and film programming space, and as a community celebration space.

The El Barrio partnership is currently designing the appropriate mechanism for community investment, and intends to offer the opportunity for individuals in South Park to invest with us as co-owners of these properties, creating literal direct community ownership of the neighborhood through the El Barrio Community Trust.

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