Kevin Freitas is the creator and driving force behind FeedTacoma.com, an online community focused on the improvement of both downtown and the entirety of our oftentimes unfairly maligned city. Just two short years since the creation of the site, FeedTacoma is an established community bustling with creative energy. The site consists of blogs, forum discussions, event calendars and help-wanted advertisements all for and about the city of Tacoma. Just recently, Kevin introduced an online shop designed for use by local, community-owned business, giving them the opportunity to increase sales and exposure. All of this is done free of charge, giving ordinary Tacomans access to professionally designed web tools, web hosting and a forum for their opinions and ideas.

Kevin Freitas is currently a Senior Developer for Sitecrafting, a locally owned and operated web design firm based in downtown Tacoma. A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University, he came to our city from southwest Washington and fell in love with Tacoma. Our views, our people and yes, even our fabled grit. Recognizing the democratizing power of the Internet, Kevin specifically designed a system – FeedTacoma.com – to allow ordinary citizens to utilize this power.

FeedTacoma has become a virtual town hall for the city. The range of views and opinions active on the site are varied and far ranging. Tacomans shop at FeedTacoma. Professionals and amateurs from all over the city brainstorm improvements for our city. The streetcars, downtown baseball parks, congestion relief, all this and more have been discussed on FeedTacoma in the last week alone. Ordinary persons come together to improve their city, whether it is by retaking urban parks or shining a light on an otherwise ignored local business.

That is the beauty and power of FeedTacoma; ordinary people. By focusing the energy, the passion, the ability and sheer ambition of ordinary Tacomans, Kevin has created a place, a real place, not a virtual one, that can and will allow us to improve our city, to no longer accept our boundaries. For too long, we – the self-proclaimed City of Destiny – has been too accepting of our limitations, too accepting of our place in the sun eclipsed by our neighbors to the north and south. FeedTacoma – and the work that Kevin has done – allow us to see that simply is not the case.