Estelita's Library Acquires Former Dragon Auto, Plans to Turn Site Into Cultural Center and Affordable Housing

On a sunny, hot Saturday afternoon just after the Fourth of July, dozens of people came through to an old auto shop on Beacon Hill to eat hot dogs, play arcade games, and celebrate a major milestone for social-justice-focused community space, library, and bookstore Estelita's Library.

Last month, Estelita's Library co-owners Dr. Estell Williams and Edwin Lindo closed a deal to buy the old Dragon Auto Repair and Transmission located on 17th Avenue South and South Forest Street. In many ways, this project represents a homecoming for Estelita's Library, which initially started on Beacon Hill before moving to its current location in the Central District in 2021.

Over the next couple of years, with lots of community input, the couple plans to turn the property into a multi-use building called the Freedom Cultural Center that will house cultural and organizing space, a library and museum of archival Black Panther newspapers, and Estelita's headquarters. Additionally, the complex will also include the Solidarity House, which will feature around 30 affordable housing units, specifically tailored to working families.

"We looked all across the South End, and we had a matrix of properties that might fit the need we had. [Dragon Auto] came up, we picked up the phone, and we made an offer on this property without ever actually having the money to buy it," recalled Lindo in a recent interview. "It took three years for us to get chosen as one of the grantees."

To nab Dragon Auto, Williams and Lindo used $2.15 million in funding from the Office of Planning and Community Development's Equitable Development Initiative — $750,000 went toward purchasing the property itself, while the remainder will fund the extensive remediation required of the site. Because of the site's previous history as an Exxon Mobil gas station, an investigation by the state's Department of Ecology found petroleum-contaminated soil and groundwater that stretches from the property into the right of way. Before Estelita's can break ground on the cultural center and housing complex, it must first clean and excavate the site of any contaminants.

This entire project is large in scale: Lindo estimates that to complete the cultural center and affordable housing complex, they'd need around $28 million. And while the Estelita's crew plans to work with city, county, and state government to leverage funds and assistance needed, they emphatically are not looking to receive federal tax credits or use any conventional methods of housing development.

"When you use the tax credits and go through the traditional model of developers, you're then beholden to the federal income poverty level as measurements for who can stay in your housing. Unfortunately, that traps people into cycles of poverty — you make $1 more than the income limit, you lose your housing," explained Williams. "So, by us developing ourselves, we set our own income [limits] up, and now you don't have to worry about losing your housing just because you get a better-paying job."

So far, Lindo says they have raised around $7 million in acquisition, capacity, and construction funds and are still in the process of applying for more grants. But, primarily, the Estelita's crew isn't looking to megacorporations or wealthy private donors to fill the gap. Rather, they are looking to the community — individuals, organizations, and the like — to donate money so families can have a roof over their heads. And none of their plans are set in stone. As the design process comes together, they plan to have community design forums to ask the community how best to shape the complex to fit the needs of the people it's meant to house. 

"We're thinking about all the ways in which our communities are disenfranchised and marginalized," said Williams. "We want to provide access and opportunity."

As they gather the funds necessary for site cleanup and construction, the Estelita's Library crew plans to make the old Dragon Auto building available to organizations as a site for gatherings and other outdoor-focused events. Although neither Williams nor Lindo have explicit experience in building affordable housing, they both emphasized that while the process to understand the rules and regulations is complicated, it's an effort that's feasible for other social-justice-focused organizations to take on. They hope other community members will join them in this process and follow their lead.

"It's not complicated because we are unsophisticated. It's complicated because they make it a black box," said Lindo. "So once we get in, we're ripping the door open, we're sharing all this information as freely as we possibly can. We're telling other orgs, 'Hey, this is how we did it,' or 'This is how you can develop.' We're still learning along the way, but everything we learn is being poured right back into community. So let's all do this."