James Center Fred Meyer closing; the Fair opens Friday

Happy Labor Day weekend, Tacoma. This week: Fred Meyer is pulling out of James Center, the Washington State Fair opens Friday with a free-admission window and free kids all weekend, downtown throws a soul food festival Saturday, and the city starts sketching out how to spend its new $320 million streets levy. Grab a coffee; this takes about five minutes.

Community Events & Things to Do

• Washington State Fair opening weekend — Friday, Sept 4 through Sept 27, Washington State Fair Events Center, Puyallup. The Fair turns 126 with a freshly finished $28 million renovation. Admission is free 10:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. on opening day if you bring a non-perishable food donation for the Puyallup Food Bank, and kids 18 and under get in free all Labor Day weekend, Friday through Monday, courtesy of BECU. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesday, Sept 9. Labor Day weekend details
• SoulFULL Festival — Saturday, Sept 5, downtown Tacoma. Free. The Black Night Market's soul food celebration brings more than 30 food vendors, live R&B and neo-soul, a kids' zone, a beer garden, and an artisan market of local BIPOC makers. Come hungry. Festival details
• The Outsider — Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., through Sept 13, Tacoma Little Theatre. $31 adults, $29 students/seniors/military, $23 kids 12 and under. TLT opens its 108th season with a political comedy about the least qualified candidate imaginable; two weekends left, and Thursday, Sept 10 is pay-what-you-can night. Tickets and showtimes
• Kathy Griffin — Friday, Sept 11, 7 p.m., Pantages Theater, 901 Broadway. The two-time Emmy winner brings her New Face, New Tour stand-up to downtown's grandest room. Tickets
• Les Misérables opening night — Friday, Sept 11 through Oct 4, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, 7116 6th Ave. Adults $35, seniors/students/military $32, kids 12 and under $25. TMP kicks off its 32nd season with the big one; bring tissues for "Bring Him Home." Season and show tickets
• Tacoma Moon Festival — Saturday, Sept 12, 1–6 p.m., Chinese Reconciliation Park, 1741 N Schuster Pkwy. Free. The 14th annual celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival brings food, performances from Tacoma's immigrant communities, and a closing lantern parade led by the Moon Princess. Festival details
• Cody Johnson Live '26 — Saturday, Sept 12, 7:30 p.m., Tacoma Dome, 2727 East D St. The CMA Male Vocalist of the Year headlines with Terri Clark and David Lewis opening. Tickets

For Families

• Free Family Movie at the Blue Mouse — Saturday, Sept 5, 11 a.m. (doors 10:30), 2611 N Proctor St. The 1923 Proctor theater's monthly free screening, sponsored by Fondi Pizzeria, is Kung Fu Panda this time around. Arrive early; it fills. Price: Free. Blue Mouse showtimes
• Washington's Original 1889 Constitution — Thursday, Sept 17, 1–7 p.m., Washington State History Museum. One day only, the state archives bring the actual founding document to Pacific Avenue; a rare show-and-tell for school-age history buffs. Price: Free. Event details
• Beat Beethoven 5K — Saturday, Sept 26, 9 a.m., Wright Park. Symphony Tacoma's all-ages run challenges you to finish before the Fifth Symphony does; registration is $45 with a T-shirt, more on race day. Price: $$$. Register

General Local News Roundup

Fred Meyer will close its James Center store, leaving one in the city
Fred Meyer confirmed Friday that it will shut down its James Center location at 6901 S. 19th St., about a year after closing its 72nd Street store. The grocery workers' union says Kroger declined to renew the lease over rising rent; roughly 100 unionized employees are affected, and the store is expected to stay open through Jan. 30, 2027. Mayor Anders Ibsen called the loss a "gut punch" and said the city's economic development team will work with the landlord to fill the space, while the Stevens store at 4505 S. 19th St. becomes Tacoma's last Fred Meyer. Read more (KOMO News)

101 cats removed from a Northeast Tacoma home
A routine welfare check Tuesday on the 6100 block of 29th Street NE turned into a two-day animal-control operation after officers spotted dozens of cats inside. The occupant surrendered 16 cats the first day; crews removed 85 more Wednesday, including one found dead. Tacoma's limit is six domesticated animals per household. Read more (KIRO 7)

Westside Estates tenant sues landlord over conditions
A renter at the Westside Estates apartments filed suit alleging the property owner repeatedly ignored unsafe conditions and violated tenant-protection law, announcing the case at a Tuesday news conference outside Pierce County District Court. The same complex was at the center of an earlier legal challenge to Tacoma's voter-approved Landlord Fairness Code. Read more (KNKX)

New traffic cameras on the Ruston stretch of Pearl
If you drive through Ruston to reach Point Defiance, note that the town has installed three new traffic cameras on Pearl, Baltimore, and 51st. Ruston's police chief and council say the goal is traffic safety; details on enforcement are on the town's site. Read more (City of Ruston)

Homicide investigation opened Aug. 27
Tacoma Police are investigating a homicide after a gunshot victim was driven to a local hospital by private vehicle around 12:23 a.m. on Aug. 27 and later died. Anyone with information is asked to contact TPD. Read more (City of Tacoma)

City Government & Council News

What happens now that Connect Tacoma passed
The Connect Tacoma streets levy that nearly 60 percent of voters approved in August takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, raising $200 million over 10 years and aiming to leverage another $120 million in grants. For homeowners, the rate is the same as the levy that expired last year: 20 cents per $1,000 of assessed value plus a 1.5 percent earnings tax on gas, electric, and phone utilities. The project list is not written yet; the city plans outreach this fall so residents can weigh in on which neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and arterials get fixed first. Read more (The Urbanist)

Council accepts $4.6M state grant for 12 new officers
The City Council accepted a $4.6 million state grant that will fund 12 entry-level police officers, three support staff, and a contract psychologist, with the city adding about $500,000 from its public safety sales tax plus $1.6 million for vehicles and gear. The catch: the grant only runs through next June, with one possible extension year, while the city faces a roughly $40 million structural deficit. Chief Patti Jackson told the council she does not expect layoffs if state money dries up, saying attrition would absorb the positions. Read more (MyNorthwest)

Two seats open on the Library Board of Trustees
The council is seeking Tacoma residents to fill two volunteer positions on the board that oversees Tacoma Public Library. If you have opinions about branch hours and book budgets, this is where they count. Read more (City of Tacoma)

Weather & Seasonal Notes

Thursday is the soggy one: showers likely through the afternoon with a high in the low-to-mid 60s. Friday clears out, mostly dry near 67, so opening day at the Fair looks fine. Saturday is a coin flip, with about a 50 percent chance of showers and a high in the mid 60s, so keep a layer and a backup plan handy. Sunday and Labor Day both look dry with highs in the upper 60s, and next week warms into the low 70s by Wednesday. Seasonal note: Tacoma Public Schools students in grades 1 through 12 head back Wednesday, Sept 9, which means school-zone speed limits and crossing guards are back on your morning drive.

Local Business & Real Estate Spotlight

County puts $300,000 toward job training at Clover Park Tech
Pierce County announced a "Building Together" initiative this week that includes $300,000 for job-training programs at Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, a common stop for Tacoma residents retraining for the trades. Read more (The Cascadian)

The week's biggest retail story, the James Center Fred Meyer closure, is covered in the news roundup above. Beyond that, permit and license filings were quiet enough that we would rather wait for a real opening than pad the list.

Food & Drink

Fresh Hoptoberfest X takes over Peaks & Pints. The Proctor bottle shop launched its tenth annual mashup of fresh-hop beers and Oktoberfest lagers this week, with festbiers and just-harvested hop ales on tap through September plus a flight featuring Sierra Nevada, Sig, Fortside, Level, and 3 Floyds. Somewhere, faintly, a tuba warms up. Details

Broadway Farmers Market, Thursdays downtown. Tacoma's original market, going since 1990, runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays at 9th and Broadway. Late-summer stone fruit and the first real apples are overlapping right now, which is the best two weeks of the market year. Market info

Frugal Tacoma

• Kids free at the Fair all weekend — Friday through Monday, Sept 4–7, anyone 18 and under gets free gate admission courtesy of BECU. Adults can pair it with the free food-drive window Friday morning and get a family in for the price of a couple cans of soup. Fair deals
• Pay-what-you-can theater — Thursday, Sept 10, 7:30 p.m., Tacoma Little Theatre lets you name your price for The Outsider. Regular tickets are $31. Details
• Free movie, free festival — the Blue Mouse's free family screening and the SoulFULL Festival, both Saturday, are covered in the events list above.

If your neighborhood spot runs a special we should know about, hit reply.

Community Spotlight

Tucked into a former South Tacoma Way storefront at 4851 South Tacoma Way, the Asia Pacific Cultural Center represents 47 countries and cultures across Asia and the Pacific Islands, and has been doing it since Korean immigrant founders opened its doors in 1996. Over the years APCC has served more than 400,000 people with language classes, youth programs, senior services, small-business support, and a steady calendar of "country days" that put one culture at a time on stage, from Korea Day in May to this month's free, family-friendly Indonesian Day on Saturday, Sept 12. Its August exhibition, Global Nexus, filled the gallery with art connecting the region's diaspora communities. The center runs on volunteers and memberships as much as grants, so if you have ever wanted to learn to fold a proper dumpling or help a newly arrived family navigate Tacoma, this is a good door to knock on.

Sports

A quiet week on our sports desk: the Rainiers and Defiance both got their turn last issue, and no fresh results or scheduled Tacoma home dates surfaced in this week's research. Check the teams' official schedule pages before heading out, and we will be back with the regular rundown next week.

This Week in Tacoma History

On September 8, 1883, at Gold Creek in the Montana wilderness, railroad financier Henry Villard drove the final spike of the Northern Pacific Railroad, completing the first transcontinental line to reach Puget Sound and making Tacoma, chosen as the western terminus back in 1873, the end of the track for the entire northern tier of the country. The little town on Commencement Bay had spent a decade waiting on that spike, betting its whole future on it, and the celebration when the news arrived by wire was something close to delirium. Within a few years the population exploded, warehouses and wheat docks lined the waterfront, and Tacoma started calling itself the City of Destiny, a nickname that has outlasted the railroad's dominance by more than a century. Villard's celebratory excursion train, loaded with European dignitaries and East Coast investors, rolled into town later that month for a look at what they had bought. Next time you are stuck at the Puyallup Avenue crossing waiting on a freight train, remember: that train is the reason there is a Tacoma to be stuck in. (Source: HistoryLink.org.)

Deadlines & Public Notices

• Tacoma Police fall community class series applications — Friday, Sept 4 — residents who want an inside look at how TPD works — Program details
• City Council study session and regular meeting — Tuesday, Sept 8, noon and 5 p.m. — anyone wishing to comment in person or online; written comments are due 24 hours before the meeting — Meeting info
• Planning Commission meeting — Wednesday, Sept 16, 5 p.m. — property owners and neighbors tracking zoning and code changes — Agendas and access
• In-district City Council meeting at STAR Center — Wednesday, Sept 30, 6 p.m. — South Tacoma residents who want the council to come to them; this replaces the Sept 29 meeting downtown — Meeting details

Before You Go

That's the issue. Enjoy the long weekend, whether it involves a scone in Puyallup, a plate of oxtail downtown, or a lantern on Schuster Parkway. Our question for you this week: with James Center losing its grocery anchor, where do you want to see a new grocer open in Tacoma, and which one? Hit reply and tell us. And if a neighbor still does not get this newsletter, forward it their way; it is the easiest good deed of the week.