Amara broke ground Monday, August 3, on a major remodel of its Pierce County Family Resource Center in Tacoma, a project that will renovate nearly half of the existing building and add new spaces for families before the site temporarily closes its doors later this month for construction.
The groundbreaking marked the start of a 2,917-square-foot interior renovation covering roughly 50% of the existing facility, according to Amara. The nonprofit says the work includes hazardous material abatement and a full layout redesign, and the design itself was shaped by input gathered since 2018 from people with lived child welfare experience. Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello attended the ceremony and toured the project site, according to a Pierce County post describing the event, which credited Amara with providing thoughtful, trauma-informed child welfare services to families in the county.
New Spaces Aim to Serve Whole Families
Once finished, the remodeled facility will include a free thrift store, an art studio inside its teen drop-in center, and dedicated indoor spaces for family gathering and therapeutic healing, per the same account from Amara. The center, located at 3501 104th Street East in Tacoma’s Midland neighborhood between Waller and Vickery roads in unincorporated Pierce County, sits within the Franklin Pierce School District. It currently operates without income or eligibility requirements, offering an emergency food pantry supplied by Eloise’s Cooking Pot, diapers through the Pierce County Diaper Bank Network, hygiene products, and housing navigation to any family that walks in.
That low-barrier model — families can access food pantries and monthly diaper distribution without formal qualification — is central to what the physical expansion is meant to support, the organization notes. But the construction comes with a real disruption: the center will suspend physical operations from August 17 through mid-November, offering interim services elsewhere before hosting a ribbon-cutting once full services resume at the renovated location later this year.
Tribal and County Dollars Fund the Build
The remodel’s funding and organizational backing came together through a public-private partnership that includes the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Pierce County, the Washington State Department of Commerce, the McEachern Foundation, Cheney Foundation, Heritage Bank, and Columbia Bank, according to Amara. The exact dollar figure behind the remodel was not disclosed in materials describing the project…