It is easy to look at Columbia Plaza and see why it’s destined to be a casualty of progress. The sprawling brown building in the heart of Columbia City houses about half a dozen shops specializing in cheap necessities, affordable luxuries, and minor splurges: poly-filled puffer jackets, gold chains, and subwoofers for the back of your Honda.
The Starbucks on the other side of Rainier Avenue marks the beginning of revitalized Columbia City: blocks of pedestrian-friendly shops including an antique-lighting store, a bakery, and scruffily trendy restaurants and bars.
The swell of renewal may soon threaten to displace the plaza, one of the last institutions of old-school Columbia City.
With a lease that expires in January 2008, the plaza and its jumble of commerce stand the risk of getting phased out. For several years, Chris Kim has subleased the property from the master leaseholder, Development Services of America, in West Seattle. But DSA isn’t renewing their lease, and Kim is trying to convince the property’s owners, a company in Boca Raton, Florida, to let him take control of the lease. The current climate makes that outcome seem unlikely. Other Columbia City business owners—who have tried unsuccessfully to get the owners to sell the land—say the future of the parcel is very much up in the air. With an influx of wealthier residents and higher-end retailers, the owners could demand higher rent. And a new leaseholder with the right read of the changing local market might be willing, unlike Kim, to bring in a tenant or tenants who can afford the cost.
Rob Mohn, a local developer, hopes for a garden center or a home-repair shop, not a chain, to take the plaza’s place. “We’re just accepting the fact that it’s going to be different,” he says. Mohn says there have been “problems” at the plaza in the past. Asked to specify, he says, “I’m not sure.” Asked again, he says, “Loitering.” In recent years, however, Mohn says the market has been a good neighbor.
He says he regrets the prospect of losing an enclave for minority-owned businesses, but isn’t sure what the community can do.
“It’ll be a real shame to have them go if they go,” he says. “I guess it’s inevitable.”
On a recent Saturday morning, several customers and one employee at ABS (Another Barber Shop) begin chanting “Hell no, we won’t go” at the suggestion they might lose their frequent hangout. A white paper sign lists the prices in black Sharpie: taper fades and all evens for $13, fades for $15, and afros for $18.
Waiting for his two sons to get trims, a 27-year-old man who introduces himself as Trail Mix says he sees a trend of pushing minorities into “the boondocks.”
“Basically, they’re trying to clean up Seattle,” he says. “It’d be wrong for them to take this away.”
Columbia Plaza, which was built as a Tradewell grocery store in 1957, morphed into its current configuration about 10 years ago. Although most of the businesses are run by minorities, as a group, the plaza’s entrepreneurs live in friendly isolation from one another. The Koreans who own the gold shop and the photo studio don’t speak enough English to make idle conversation with the barbers in the next stall over. While customers drift from stall to stall, most cashiers don’t wander over to visit in other shops.
Nonetheless, each business’s success relies on an astute interpretation of ethnic niches.
Mike Aribesse, 32, who is Ethiopian, runs the 99 Cent Plus store. He sells the widest variety of merchandise in the mall, from international phone cards to giant chenille throws with pictures of huskies. Aribesse gamely breaks down the ethnic preferences for items in his store.
Mexicans, he says, like the Scarface posters and T-shirts. African Americans buy “soda and chips, cigarettes and eyeglasses,” he says, not even pointing to the rack of cheap sunglasses. “The Asians,” he says, “like those colored house shoes.” Aribesse says his main goal is to keep prices low.
Flora Ybarra, who runs the children’s clothing store, says she hopes to save the current configuration of the plaza by improving its image. She grabs a piece of yellow paper off the asphalt outside and waves it in the air as proof of how easy it is to clean up. Pointing to three black men standing on the sidewalk, she says, “There used to be more like them. Now, there are families coming.”
The three men appear to be waiting for a ride. 