"The fight and the struggle for L.E.M.S. to stay in this location is crazy," said Hassan Messiah El, owner of L.E.M.S. Cultural Center and Bookstore for Life Enrichment, a historic, local gathering space for the Black community. He recounted that 10 years ago he told the former store owner and his godmother, the late Vickie Williams, "We're gonna buy this. I'm buying this."
That dream is in flight. For years, L.E.M.S. rented property. But now L.E.M.S. and Jazz Night School will share a property across the street from The Royal Room in Columbia City. The roughly half-acre site currently includes the parking lot on the southwest corner of Rainier Avenue South and South Hudson Street, a smoke shop, a fenced off grassy space and L.E.M.S. The future development, which has no estimated completion date, plans to include L.E.M.S. and Jazz Night School on the ground floor, lower level parking, and affordable housing on upper floors.
The land was purchased for $3.2 million.
Williams started a bookstore in the 1990s on Rainier Avenue South and South Kenyon Street. When the shop moved further north near South Orcas Street, Messiah El's mother, Aaliyah Messiah, opened a shop inside it called Learning Education Materials and Software: L.E.M.S. The acronym stuck. Messiah El has run L.E.M.S., a community space that hosts events and sells both books and his clothing line on Rainier since 2017, when previous owner, Williams, passed away. The shop is considered the longest running Black bookstore in the area.
L.E.M.S. has had multiple fundraisers to keep its doors open. Despite the demands of the store on his personal life, Messiah El has been committed to continuing what the store has stood for to the community.
Jaime Petrozzi, a real estate development consultant working with Messiah El, said she's heard many accounts of L.E.M.S. transforming lives. "About 20 people have told me, '[L.E.M.S.] affected my life. I went to school and do what I do,' because of L.E.M.S. That's very moving for me."
The property L.E.M.S. rented had been owned since the 1970s by the Murakami family. The family put it up for sale in 2013, and numerous prospective buyers looked into the space but didn't reach a sale. Messiah El said that's because the site is a brownfield. The portion of the site that's currently a parking lot used to be a gas station. The building L.E.M.S. occupies was once Washin Murakami's auto shop, a business that some community members say was a popular shop with a good reputation. It's common for lots that once hosted automotive businesses to require environmental cleanup before new development.
After Messiah El heard of numerous stalled purchase attempts, in 2022 he applied for funding from the city's Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) with hopes to purchase the land but received news not long after that someone else bought the property. He was devastated.
Messiah El told only a few people the property was sold. In August 2022 he shared the news with a friend inside L.E.M.S., when someone walked up and said he was looking for the Messiah family. It was Erik Hanson, founder of Jazz Night School, a nonprofit just a few blocks down the street on Rainier.
Messiah El remembered, "He said, 'We're the ones who bought the property.' And then he asked me, 'What did you plan on doing? Because we're not buying the property to kick you out or anything. Would you stay if you could?' I was like, 'Yeah, of course.' He said, 'Oh, thank God! I can't wait to tell the board!'" Messiah El continued, "Now I knew this was a community thing — not the people I thought was going to show up. It was a sigh of relief."
Hanson, who loved playing jazz music in a Tacoma-area high school, studied music in college and worked in the recording industry in Los Angeles for years. After moving back to the area, he started Jazz Night School in 2008, and for years, it operated out of his home in the Brighton neighborhood. In 2017, the school moved into its current space that includes a handful of practice rooms, an office, and a foyer for larger groups.
Jazz Night School is a nonprofit program with a mission to provide a nurturing environment to students of all ages. The program focuses on expanding awareness and understanding of the Black American experience and history while helping people learn to play jazz music. Jazz Night School serves more than 260 students per quarter.
Hanson was considering the lease about five years ago and discussed with his board how to stay in the neighborhood amid the current Seattle real estate market. They concluded that they needed to own a space to stay. "As a nonprofit, it's a tenuous existence. It's been a long process of trying to get to a place where we can survive and be permanent," said Hanson.
After looking at possible options nearby, Hanson purchased the Murakami property in 2022.
In Hanson's pursuit of a permanent home, he received expertise from Jazz Night School community member Ben Rankin of Conlin Columbia Partnerships for Cities, an experienced project developer who works on projects that involve affordable housing and the arts.
"I appreciate that Hassan [Messiah El] has kept the dream of L.E.M.S. alive under very difficult circumstances — the lack of financial resources, all the struggles of a nonprofit, not giving up," Rankin said. He also identified Hanson's commitment "in running a small arts organization with a big, complex community. The tenacity that both of them have shown is what makes this kind of thing possible."
In a separate interview, Hanson said, "As appreciators of Black American music, the opportunity to be shoulder to shoulder in this project and physically located with an important Black American, Seattle community organization, a bookstore, and a cultural hub: This fits with what I want us to be doing. We want to be on that site, but we want to be on that site with L.E.M.S."
Within weeks of first meeting Hanson, Messiah El received word that he was awarded $1.5 million from EDI. Months later, he applied for a 2023 EDI grant and was awarded another $2.2 million.
The two organizations are currently looking for a developer and affordable housing partner to move forward on the project.
L.E.M.S. said that within about 5,700 square feet, they plan to have the bookstore, a larger cultural space, a media room for podcasting and recording, commercial kitchens, the wellness room with herbal medicine products, and a space for meetings and classes.
Jazz Night School plans on 8,000 square feet, hosting six smaller practice rooms, offices, a café, a larger ensemble rehearsal space, and a small performance venue with about 125 seats.
As Jazz Night School and L.E.M.S. continue their plans, Messiah El is looking for a place to temporarily relocate during site cleanup and construction. Through the changes, L.E.M.S. plans to reopen with more regular hours in January. Jazz Night School continues on a capital campaign toward paying off the purchase price for the property.
Yuko Kodama is the News editor for the South Seattle Emerald. She is passionate about the critical role community media plays in our information landscape and loves stories that connect us to each other and our humanity. Her weekly "South End Life" column spotlights the stories of neighbors and community members that weave through the South End.
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