BY KRISTIE WORTHEY for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 10/2/2026
Something resembling a business district is taking shape on South 11th Street, one coffee, knife, book, tattoo, and jar of refillable hand soap at a time.
There are knives and pottery. Kids’ books and greeting cards. Tattoos and haircuts. And now there’s a general store where customers walk in carrying empty jars and announce they need soap. The shops have their own specialties, their own personalities, and their own vibe. They have their own Instagram chat group. Some of the businesses have even given their little stretch of Tacoma a name: the Unofficial South 11th Street Business District.
“We’re like a block outside a business district line,” said Michele Jones, owner of Hive.
Jones almost wasn’t there at all. “I had a gift and lifestyle shop on South Tacoma Way, and we were kind of forced to close down at the end of last year because of some landlord stuff,” Jones said. “And so we were just going through the whole, like, do we want to do this again? You know, like, is this just it? Do we need to close down?”
Then Sarah Woodson, co-owner of Tacoma Knife Sharpening & Mercantile, texted Jones about one little empty storefront in the row.
“I was like, ‘No, there’s no way,’” Jones said. “There’s overlap with what I carry with McCoy Kids and Louda and you guys, and I was like, ‘It doesn’t feel like a good fit.’”
There was one problem with that argument.
“But that’s the street that I always shop on,” she said. “Like, I love all of those places.”
The no lasted about a week. “I just, like, woke up in the middle of the night and I’m like, ‘You know what? This is gonna have to happen.’”
Before signing the lease, Jones went to her prospective neighbors and asked about potential conflicts. “My goal and my intent is to kind of pare back or pull back what I have that would overlap anything you have, and that way I can direct people to you and maybe open up some space for different things in my shop,” she said.
The neighbors were on board. Jones signed the lease in December, renovations began in February, and Hive opened its doors in August.
Stephen Gangl, co-owner of Tacoma Knife Sharpening & Mercantile with Woodson, remembers being surprised by the foot traffic when they opened.
“There was definitely more foot traffic than I was expecting,” Gangl said. “Having all the businesses and all the space filled in the building really, I think, helps and is a draw to bringing people here.”
Gangl points to longtime neighbors including McCoy Kids, Louda, Tentacle, and Buzzerd’s. More recently, he has watched retail spaces fill and more people move into nearby apartments. “I think there’s more of a draw now that all our shops are here,” he said.
Gangl knows something about changing direction himself. A former chef, he turned to professional knife sharpening when he decided it was time to leave restaurant kitchens.
“I needed a change,” he said. “I’m getting older and just needed a change.”
But he didn’t travel far from his old profession. “I got out of the kitchen, but not too far away, I guess.”
Woodson’s Downing Pottery became part of the mercantile from the beginning. “When we first were opening, trying to tell people, like, knives and pottery, and people were like, ‘What?’” Gangl said. “I’m like, ‘No, kitchen stuff. Like, we go together. Everything goes together.’”
Hive has undergone its own reinvention. Jones moved to Tacoma from Nashville in 2018 and originally opened an event venue on South Tacoma Way before deciding she wanted something different.
“I had always wanted to have something on my own that was, like, creative, but I’m not, like, an artsy person,” she said. “I like to, like, find and curate things. Like, I love making connections with people.”
She reopened the space as Hive in April 2024, creating a general store built around local and small makers. The move to South 11th gave her room to expand an idea she had never quite managed at the old location: a refillery.
“I expected to open with maybe a few things in the refillery, and when we opened, I had, like, over 20 things,” Jones said. “I was like, ‘Well, I guess I took that up a notch.’”
She wasn’t sure customers would embrace it. “I honestly was like, this is not gonna do well. You know, we’re gonna have all this stuff sitting here forever.”
Instead, she has already reordered and restocked products.
Some customers need no explanation. “I opened the door one day and a girl came in with her jars. She’s like, ‘I need soap.’ I was like, ‘Cool, you get it.’”
The same cooperative philosophy Jones brought to South 11th shows up in what Hive doesn’t sell. Before opening, Jones bought compost bins for the refillery. Woodson came over and asked if she planned to carry them. “I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And she’s like, ‘You know we sell them, right?’ I was like, ‘I did not know that.’”
The solution was simple. “I was like, ‘So cool, I’m not going to sell them.’”
Jones has cut back on children’s merchandise because McCoy Kids is nearby and reduced her greeting card selection because Louda specializes in them.
Recently, when a family came into Hive looking for a children’s book, Jones walked them outside, pointed them toward McCoy Kids and texted her neighbor to say they were coming.
“I don’t care if they don’t buy them from me,” Jones said. “Like, it just doesn’t matter to me. Like, sure, I need to make money and pay my bills, but there’s plenty of pie slices for everybody. You know what I mean? Like, it’s unlimited pie.”
Gangl sees the same thing from his storefront.
“I definitely let people know about the other shops on the block,” he said. “It’s very cohesive, I would say.”
No one planned a South 11th business district. No committee recruited the right mix of stores. They just keep sending customers down the block.
Maybe Gangl had it right about the knives and pottery. “Everything goes together.”
Tacoma Knife Sharpening & Mercantile, 502 S. 11th St., Tacoma, WA.
Tacomaknife.com
