Downtown is not one of the 15 neighborhood business districts. It is the Regional Growth Center: city hall, Museum District, UW Tacoma, the brick on Pacific Avenue. Last checked August 29, 2026.
City hall and 311 counter: 747 Market Street. Customer Support Center, 2nd floor, Monday–Friday 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Fire HQ is 901 Fawcett. Police HQ is out on Pine — police records desk.
I like Tacoma Rising. That is the whole reason this is here. They are good for the city in a way that is easy to name and hard to fake: they keep putting people in the same room and then asking those people to do something with the room.
Reid Fetters started it in 2021 after moving here, when the pandemic hangover still made in-person feel optional. The early version was social posts and a handful of people who wanted Tacoma to work. By 2023 the shape was three verbs — promote, connect, support — and monthly tours of places that were actually opening or changing. UrbanWork used one of those rooms to fill desks. Tacoma Centre used one before the public doors. That is not branding. That is occupancy.
The motto on the site is “Let’s Complement, not Compete.” Fine as a slogan. Better as a practice if you watch what they schedule. The 2026 Challenge put fifty students and forty mentors on Pacific Avenue for a day — the corridor that is supposed to connect UW Tacoma to downtown and often does not. Seven colleges. Real maps. One winner. Fetters said the quiet part out loud: there are seven schools in this area and the city has to keep the students. That is the Port-and-campus problem written as a Saturday.
In February they ran The Pitch and handed Sign and Celebrate a $10,000 check. In July they put high-school and college kids on an eight-week accelerator whose product is not a slide deck. The product is the South Sound Showdown, a chili cook-off at the Rhodes Center on September 19 — restaurants, beer garden, live music, and a scholarship pot if the sponsors show up. Soft opening was August 27. If you cook under a commercial license and want in, the address they published is stayconnected@tacomarising.com.
They also do the easier calendar items: golf at Allenmore, March Madness networking, tours of Lumora and whiskey rooms and the Port. Those are how a city’s operators find each other. The harder items are the ones that treat students as founders instead of audience. That is the part I want on this site.
This is not a paid placement and I have not been in every room they have opened. I am saying they are doing the connective work downtown keeps asking someone else to do. If you run a shop on Pacific, teach at UWT, or still have a Thursday free, their calendar is at tacomarising.com. September 19 is the next date with a kitchen attached.
