“The story of Made Space is also my story,” - Stephanie Morales, founder, Made Space (Photo: Jordan Somers)

By Piper Davidson - #SupportBlackBusiness

Stephanie Morales is looking to fight gentrification through community ownership.

Her business, Made Space Seattle, is a local event and art space rooted in support for Black creatives. Originally an artist herself, Morales has taken on the role of manager, fundraiser, program coordinator, and everything in between — often falling back on her artist income to keep the business running. Her story is all too familiar to business owners in the Central District, an area facing rapidly increasing rent prices following recent gentrification.

“To be able to mitigate gentrification through holding space is kind of the core of Made Space itself,” Morales said.

The space, like Morales, wears many hats. The event space takes any shape it needs to, and it has become a location that other Black business owners and community members can lean on.

“Empowering any Black owned business has a multiplier effect in the Black community, but with someone like Stephanie where she's being a space holder as her core work, that is true in even more magnified ways,” Kiesha Garrison, founder of Hey Black Seattle, said. “In my early days of Hey Black Seattle, Made Space was instrumental in not only helping me find space to host events but also she exposed me to a lot of different organizations.”

Following on-going conflict with Made Space’s landlord, threat of eviction sparked a pressing goal for Morales: property ownership.

“Leasing is not enough, and this is where we have to have ownership, because the narrative is stronger than anything that we do,” Morales said of her leasing conflict.

The goal of ownership is not only to fight her own struggles with leasing, but to fight the greater battle against gentrification, she said.

“This is literally what gentrification does,” Morales said. “It displaces and it removes us from space, which removes us from the narrative of the neighborhood and the place that we can come and be and connect and have a sense of belonging.”

Morales' hope is to build a community-ownership model that will support not only Made Space, but other Black-owned businesses.

“We’ve got two key stakeholders, Carita Hall from Holistic Coalition, and we've got Kristina Clark from Loving Room Books,” Morales said. “And so these are two Black women that we hope will be able to own part of the space. And then upstairs, we would like to have art and music studios as well as potential artist residency.”

Morales intends for the business model to inspire community mindedness.

VIDEO: Converge Media was present for the Made Space Re-Grand Opening in January of 2023. (Converge Media Presents)

“I want this to be a repeatable model,” Morales said. “So I think that if we can figure out how to set up a framework for how multiple organizations or multiple individuals or community can sort of buy into this or have partial ownership of this space. It creates something that has real longevity, because it’s not one person who can just say, ‘oh yeah, we just want to, like, sell it to the this highest developer.’”

Morales, in her journey towards property ownership, has worked with consultants through Seattle’s Office of Economic Development’s (OED) free accounting and business consulting program.

“It's all free, which is really fantastic,” Diem Ly, OED division director, said. “It's up to 10 hours of consulting service. So in that way, I think we really hope that if people can access that program and get the specific support that they need, that it'll help their business grow and help address some key problems that they might be having.”

Despite resources from the city, funding remains the biggest hurdle to Made Space’s growth and Morales’ path to developing ownership, she said.

“What I really need community to do is to show up, to share and support,” Morales said. “And that can look like a lot of different things. You know, we've got links that you can donate as little as five bucks to. It can be sharing our name in a room with people that you think might want to support, or rent, or whatever.”

Morales emphasized that supporting Made Space is much bigger than just supporting a business. It’s supporting a movement that will reclaim Black community and establish a better Central District going forward, she said.

VIDEO: When bullets flew through the windows of A4Apple Early Learning Center in October 2023, community members organized a meeting at Made Space to plan a way forward. The CDPSA was formed that night. (Back2Besa / FOX13Seattle)

“It sort of changes the mindset and the culture and the dynamic of the Central District or anybody that is involved in it by just seeing a community investment project like that, and seeing something that's outside of the norm of individual ownership and centralized power,” Morales said.

This ties back to the idea of resistance against gentrification; community property ownership allows for the Central District’s Black community to protect their space and bolster the neighborhood without large property development companies.

Supporting Made Space’s ownership project is the next step towards progress, a step that is deeply connected to the sole efforts of Morales.

“The story of Made Space is also my story,” Morales said. “And so it's something that I genuinely care about. I am in the community. I'm of the community. I am an artist. My story is interwoven in this.”

Made Space Seattle

2002 E Union St

Seattle, WA 98122

917-544-2996

Go Fund Me

Email: madespaceseattle@gmail.com

Instagram: @madespaceseattle

This article is part of Converge Media’s Support Black Business Campaign. Please click here to learn more and support!