Hilltop Main Street
Main Street of Upper Tacoma is new way of looking at the creation of what is becoming a thriving business district on the hilltop.
Many of the people responsible plan a celebration of this success in the Music and Mural Festival on June 20 at the Memorial Park on Martin Luther King Way and 9th, to unveil a new mural by artist Bob Henry.
The David Keyes Trio will headline, fronted by Yako Enzene, an African music group, and Matissas, a Latino group.
The variety of of the music reflects the international flavor of Upper Tacoma, with restaurants serving continental, Thai, Chinese, Southern, Vietnamese, barbecue, Japanese, and other dishes in different venues.
There will be performances of children jumping ropes in traditional forms, glass blowing, hair beading, and Revolutionary War spun metal crafting.
Says Jack Davis of Rainier Metal Craftsmen, "This will be my Grand Opening, I will be dressed as Paul Revere. There will be four young men to turn the seven-foot in diameter flywheel to operate the metal spinning lathe, which will reach speeds of 2500 to 3000 RPM".
Jack Davis's work was displayed in EXPO '86 in Vancouver, BC where he displayed an eight-foot-square sterling silver and blue marble bed that had a price tag of $10 million dollars. His work and new Tacoma studio was the subject of a feature article in Better Homes And Gardens, Country Home.
"This will take you back in history. I am one of 12 Master Metal Spinners in this country, practicing this craft in the traditional way for 27 years, and my wife and I have the retirement plan to settle down and teach, making brass beds, punch bowls, goblets in silver, copper and pewter."
Bob Henry learned his craft of professional mural painting during his twenty years with Ackerly. He prepared the mural, which is painted on a canvas of acrylic plastic in his barn, then hung it with the help of sign poster Bill Roach. His wife Karen provided support from the ground. Bob has also painted the interior of the Muckleshoot Casino where he made a "virtual jungle" and the Bulls Eye Shooter Supply in downtown Tacoma.
He plans to add some three dimensional cutouts that will stand in front of the mural. After that he will begin work on his next project, a mural of Commencement Bay in the 1900's that will hang on the wall of Gallery by Design in Old Town on North 30th and Carl.
Bob Henry still does work for Ackerly because, "The computers and huge printers that replaced me cannot always produce the color that the customer picked out. It still takes an artist to do that. So I go out and fix it".
The Main Street district is bordered by L, 9 th, 15 th, and J streets. There are 16 new business in the area, and plans for more, including some retail, light industrial and transportation related companies such as Rite Aide and Paratransit in the surrounding area.
Longtime residents of Tacoma see this as a welcome success in an area that has seen troubles in the last decade. Those who were here in the 1970's remember when the Hilltop was a peaceful residential and business district with multicultural roots stretching back to the 1870's, when a group of European and African settlers bought land in what was to be called the Ainsworth Addition. Their plan was to provide homes for the railroad workers.
According to Alberta Canada, head of Main Street and a long time resident, "The trouble started when the Cuban boatlift people were driven out of the downtown up onto the hill. They established a 'Criminal culture' here, and residents remember how wild they were, how people were afraid of them. Then after they were driven out, the LA gangs moved in to target the opportunity. The worst years were from 1990 to 1996. Now what we are doing is to target opportunities ourselves."
In 1992, Tony Balk and Alberta Canada held a summit of 228 residents to determine the future of the hilltop.
Out of that meeting came the plans and strategies to deal with specific problems that are in place today. More recently there have been surveys to find out what current concerns are. One recurring statement was, "I feel good about my block, people really watch out for each other here, but over on (insert street name here), that's a bad area". And when the survey takers went over to the mentioned street, they heard the same statement, with a different street name inserted.
People have also told of a desire to beautify their neighborhoods, to plant trees, gardens, and make improvements. Is this the same "Hilltop" of such a bad reputation?
