After touring the country as a musician for ten years, Mason Reed knew exactly how a real musician’s music club looks and feels. “You roll in after driving 300 miles and your music is playing on the stereo and they say, ‘we’re so glad to see you!’”
With that vision in mind, Reed and his then-business partner Matthew O’Toole opened Tim’s Tavern in White Center in March 2023, after losing the lease on their bar in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood right after the pandemic. White Center aspired to become a live music hub, Reed says the landlord had told them, so their programming in the former Drunky Two Shoes BBQ building on 16th Ave SW was ambitious — six live shows a week on an outdoor stage next to the tavern in case of future COVID waves.
Tim’s Tavern quickly became a household name in the musician’s scene in greater Seattle as a venue where beginning bands still have an opportunity to play live and craft their performing skills. “We’re definitely old-school, we’re keeping that energy alive,” says Reed. “Tim’s is an incubator for baby bands. Kids nervously play their first show here and two years later you see them in The Tractor in Seattle.”
Growing a vibrant, communal, and accessible local music and arts scene from the ground up — like Seattle had in the late 80s and 90s — has been the driving force of creatives and small-business owners who have moved to White Center in recent years.
Skyrocketing real estate prices and cost of living in Seattle have pushed many artists and musicians out of the city that gained worldwide fame for its musical talent. Or, if they managed to stay, have forced them to take on day jobs to sustain their art. Music venues struggle with the same issue — many expect bands to bring a money-spending crowd with them. Only a handful of venues can still afford to book relatively unknown bands.
The new business owners in White Center have also soured on everything that turbocharged growth in Seattle brought in its wake — loss of creative communities, a tectonic cultural shift from DIY to Big Business, and the mushrooming of, as Reed calls them, “ticky-tacky buildings.”
“There is still a lot of talent in Seattle but the whole ecosystem around it has vanished since the dotcom era. Nowadays it’s a very elitist tech-bro scene,” says Dave Price, owner of Greenroom Decor, who has decorated artists’ dressing rooms and company events since the early 90s.
In 2021, Price opened an events space on 17th Avenue SW in White Center after being forced to move his business three times in Seattle. “It hadn’t changed much here, which was exciting because everything else had. It was the last kind of memory of Seattle,” he says between his carefully curated furniture and iconic pieces. “Gentrification hasn’t found its way here yet.”
It is a sentiment that is shared by many business owners on 16th and 17th Ave SW, some of whom are hoping to revive the spirit of the early grunge years. “White Center reminds me of the Pike-Pine corridor 30 years ago, when it was just cool,” Adam Heimstadt says, sitting on a lonely bar stool in the La Camera building.
The artist and owner of the carnival-themed Unicorn & Narwhal bars in Capitol Hill and his wife Kayleigh Wilson bought the building after realizing they couldn’t afford real estate in Seattle. He has been working “over 40 hours a week” to turn part of the building into a “destination bar” for people from South and West Seattle. “I want to create something magical and new.”
His hand-painted creation, made of recycled materials, is a feast for the senses: the arched ceiling, which fits in Heimstadt’s vision of a circus tent, is covered in detailed colorful flowers, a long bar (“probably the longest in America”) stretches from one end of the building to the other, teacups from a carnival ride are waiting to be turned into tables and booths, and a mounted bear adds another quirky detail.
Because the new large apartment buildings in Seattle have wrecked small businesses, Heimstadt says, he has given first-time business owners a chance in the La Camera building, which stretches almost an entire block — clothing shop Cher Baby Vintage, Barbarella’s Barbershop, and the pro wrestling-themed Lariat Bar, all have at least one female owner. “There is hope and inspiration in White Center. I think it’s still possible to build a scene here because there are enough younger people and artists, and artists make a community.”
King Country, which governs unincorporated White Center, welcomes this outburst of artistic and entrepreneurial energy. “Folks have moved here with big dreams,” says Kate Becker, King County’s Creative Economy Director. The co-founder of the Vera Project and former Director of the Office of Film + Music at the City of Seattle knows what she’s talking about when she says the comparison with Seattle in the early 90s is “spot on.”
Asked what White Center — with approximately 16,000 residents and a median household income of just over $60,000 —has that Seattle has lost due to an influx of wealth, Becker rattles it off: more availability of affordable housing and workspaces, easier parking, diverse neighborhoods, “and a slightly gritty edge that still holds opportunities,” she says. “White Center is not wholly developed and finished, and that is compelling to creatives.”
Becker’s job is setting creatives and small businesses up for success and troubleshooting any issues they might encounter. The county, which is hiring a White Center Economic Revitalization Manager, is a big proponent of night life in downtown, Becker says. “It serves a part of the community and increases vibrancy and public safety.”
White Center, already dubbed “the last neighborhood in Seattle,” is indeed a world away from what it was less than a decade ago. Besides all the activity in the La Camera building, small businesses such as Lil Woody’s, The Alpine Diner & Bar, and Búho have sprung up around Tim’s Tavern. Signs announce the opening of Mexican restaurant Whateke and the building on the main corridor where Dottie’s Double Wide was housed before a fire destroyed it in 2021, has been fixed up.
Business owners unanimously emphasize the welcoming and supportive creative community and the refreshing lack of pretense and corporate culture. “All White Center wants is to stay White Center,” says Nate Little, co-owner of the Lariat Bar.
“People here love their city and their neighborhoods,” Price explains. “They’re working really hard to be able to stay and grow a community into their vision. It’s not an executive decision, they do it from the inside out.”
But not all residents are on board with White Center becoming a new playground for artists and musicians. While noise complaints and concerns about multiple businesses have been raised over the last years, Tim’s Tavern, with six outdoor live shows a week, found itself right in the crosshairs.
Soon after the bar opened, the first noise complaints started rolling in. Internal King County emails show that neighbors self-reported a combined 100 noise complaints in the first year after Tim’s Tavern opened and that the complaints kept coming until at least the end of 2024.
Reed was surprised: he had bought a business that had been operating with outdoor music for seven years, so he assumed the permitting was in order, he says.
According to the county’s Permitting Division, downtown White Center has always been zoned as Community Business, which means no outdoor music venues are allowed in this area, unless a special permit has been granted.
So why did the county not intervene when Drunky Two Shoes BBQ had live bands on its outdoor patio? The county only responds to complaints and to his knowledge none were filed about Drunky, Permitting Division Director Jim Chan says.
However, the dozens of internal King County emails, spanning a period of almost two years, paint a picture of government officials who found themselves faced with a dilemma: dealing with increasingly frustrated White Center neighbors over the lack of action but seemingly also not in any hurry to act.
Becker acknowledges the county is walking a tightrope in trying to revitalize downtown White Center while responding to residents’ needs and upholding codes and regulations. “We have to get good at walking that tightrope. The long-time residents, the creative community, and the county need to work together for solutions, and I think we can.”
After agreeing in the summer of 2023 to end the outdoor shows at 10 PM on weekends, Tims’ Tavern owner Reed moved his stage last February indoors — a remodel of well over $100,000 he hadn’t planned for, he says. “But I want to be a good neighbor. I live in White Center myself now.”
When a King County official announced the solution at the NHUAC community meeting in February, the news was met with both booing from local music fans, and applause from neighbors. “They thought this was the Wild West and they could just come in and do whatever they wanted,” long-time resident Barbara Dobkin says. Gentrification is not the issue, she and another neighbor, who wants to stay anonymous, emphasize. Dobkin: “We want to see a healthy, thriving community. But not at our expense. This is an incredibly loud disturbance.”
If Tim’s Tavern had “flown under the radar like Drunky’s” with occasional, “not loud” outdoor live music, she wouldn’t have complained, she adds. But asked what number of outdoor live shows a week at Tim’s would be acceptable to Dobkin and her neighbor, they both answer, “None.”
That raises the question: should downtown White Center at some point be rezoned? It’s a process that could take months, instead of years, if a council member would initiate it, but would also affect other Community Business zones in unincorporated King County.
It is certainly something that needs to be considered in a growing community, Becker thinks. “It is the question everyone is grappling with right now. Is it realistic to say: no outside noise in downtown? Noise and traffic come with a vibrant community.”
Reed points out that many people tell him that hearing a band and seeing a crowd makes them feel safer in downtown. “Neighbors complain while we have carjackings and people overdosing,” says Reed, whose own bar was broken into twice in six months.
After the remodel of Reed’s tavern, the county stopped receiving noise complaints. However, in March, he faced new county requirements to show architectural plans and update the plumbing underneath his outdoor Airstream trailer bar amongst others.
Reed, exasperated, says: “We’re the only business that brings in outside money during the week. If we leave, who in their right mind would try what we do again? Our parking lot will just become another tent city.”
King County officials want to avoid the impression they make life hard for small businesses. The takeaway message, stresses Permitting Division Director Chan, “is that we didn’t proactively go after someone. Tim’s is a business worth pursuing and keeping, so we work with Mason and allow him time to fix these issues without shutting him down.”
The push and pull between competing interests in White Center is far from unique — the city south of Seattle is a microcosm of what’s happening all over the U.S. and other parts of the world. Because big cities have become too expensive for the creative class, they move to smaller working-class cities on the outskirts, where governments usually welcome them but residents have started to eye warily as harbingers of gentrification and unwanted change.
Major changes are already heading White Center’s way. As part of the King County Comprehensive Plan, the area around 16th Ave SW has been designated as the White Center Unincorporated Activity Center, “which is a focal point for activity and investment” for high-density multifamily housing and job growth amongst others.
Across from Dave Price’s building on 17th Ave SW the foundation of a new building is going in. The cheap lease of his event space suddenly went up, he says, and the competition from big party decorating companies has increased, so he decided to scale down and close the space. In March, he started selling off his curated furniture. “I’m tired and done,” Price says, surrounded by piled-up red tables and rugs, white egg-shaped chairs, and a mobile stage — the remnants of a deflated dream.
The greatest challenge for Becker and her colleagues is figuring out how White Center and other communities around Seattle don’t just attract creatives but make it possible for them to stay. Her office studies models from around the country, including public investment in affordable-rent artist spaces such as Station Space and Base Camp Studios 2 in Seattle, offering a shared-rent model, and attracting philanthropists or investors like John Bennett, who bought and restored many buildings in Seattle’s Georgetown to keep creatives in the city.
“We want to be conscious of stabilizing the creative community,” Becker says.
Seattle has become a cautionary tale in this regard. Becker calls it an “accurate impression” that the city got steamrolled by corporate forces and capital, and that there were not enough people with the power to stop gentrification or at least slow it down.
“Was there a moment in time we could have done something? I don’t know. It all happened very fast and the pace was hard to keep up with.”
The devastating effects have been documented in the Creative Economy Report from 2019, which Becker co-wrote for the City of Seattle. Creative industries contribute a whopping 18% of the gross regional product but while the city benefits greatly from its creative residents, they don’t exactly benefit from the city.
The disparity, even before the pandemic and subsequent inflation, is stunning — adjusted for cost of living, the median hourly wages of creatives in computer jobs in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue were the highest of the 53 U.S. metros with populations of more than 1 million, and the lowest for creatives in arts, design, entertainment, and media.
The silver lining is that a counter movement of long-time residents, small business owners, and creatives who are fighting for their communities, shared history[HS5] , and way of life has sprung up in different parts of the U.S. The rapidly changing Eastside of Los Angeles for instance has become a prime battleground for anti-gentrification activists. Last year, they scored a historic win by using the city’s own process to successfully appeal a planned demolition.
Forty community members testified about their own experiences with evictions and displacement, and appellant Viva Padilla explained in a 75-page appeal how the rich historic-cultural Latino fabric of Boyle Heights, with its street vendors and norteños musicians, would unravel if the development project would move ahead.
In White Center, Reed makes the same point in the Tim’s Tavern parking lot, standing in front of a wall with the motto Together In Music. “Hundreds of kids still come to the city that gave birth to Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Macklemore, and so many other bands to become the next Kurt Cobain. And we’re trying to get rid of that? All for nice condos and big tech jobs?!”
No, that’s not going to happen if it’s up to him. “This is my life. I believe in the ability of music to change the world. It is the one universal thing that unites as all. The show must go on.”
What a great “Who knew?” story!
This is a great story! I live down the road in Highland Park. Been meaning to go to Tim’s and also check out some of the other great stuff happening in White Center.