This gateway park to Tacoma is an ‘embarrassment’ and ‘painful to see.’ Is there a solution?
Don Pugnetti Park isn’t big, but it’s presence is mighty as it heralds visitors to downtown Tacoma via state Route 509, Interstate 705 and Pacific Avenue. When it opened in 1987, planters filled with red and yellow flowers, a colorful mural and young, green trees greeted travelers and pedestrians.
Today, it might as well be telling travelers to go back where they came from.
The park in the heart of Tacoma is a trash-filled, vandalized space devoid of people. Brambles grow where flowers once did and those once thriving trees have been hacked to pieces, presumably for firewood.
“It is painful to see,” said Don “Jerry” Pugnetti, Jr. earlier this week. The park is named after his father. “It’s just heartbreaking for the family. And it’s hard to visit it.”
Tacoma State Rep. Jake Fey calls the park, “an embarrassment.”
Fey, Pugetti and other civic leaders are looking for solutions. But the hurdles are high and it may take a change in state law to bring the park back to its glory days.
WSDOT’s priorities
Pugnetti Park is owned by the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT). It’ll be the first to admit it’s not in the parks business.
In an emailed response to The News Tribune this week, WSDOT spokesperson Cara Mitchell said the agency monitors the park weekly.
“We are keeping it as clean as we can with the resources we have,” she said. “Graffiti removal is a low priority. Items such as repairing potholes, safety guardrail and signals are a higher priority.”
The park was built in 1987 to honor Don Pugnetti, a former News Tribune editor who was a major proponent of building the I-705 “Tacoma Spur” through Tacoma.
A walk through the park this week with Jerry Pugnetti and his wife Wendy revealed graffiti, camp fires and benches stripped of wood.
History
The park is part of the SR 509 corridor which WSDOT acquired in 1984.
In addition to a monument dedicated to Pugnetti, the park contains a historical stone marker from 1926, commemorating the Dec. 16, 1873 arrival of the Northern Pacific Rail’s arrival in Tacoma.
Don Pugnetti, the son of a Carbonado coal miner, grew up in Tacoma. He spent decades in the Richland, Kennewick and Pasco area where he was an editor of the Tri-City Herald. He led The News Tribune from 1973 to 1985.
Pugnetti worked in the newspaper era when editors and publishers were boosters of their circulation area. On the Hanford nuclear reservation, Pugnetti successfully campaigned for Congressional approval to convert waste steam from a nuclear plant into electricity. In Tacoma, he lobbied for the spur that now connects I-5 with Schuster Parkway.
Occupied
In 2012, members of the Occupy Tacoma movement took over the park for four months. After protesters were cleared, WSDOT fenced the park off and put it up for sale, citing liability and maintenance costs.
A News Tribune editorial at the time reflected the feelings of city leaders and much of its citizenry.
“At the entrance to the city, the park makes a nice statement about Tacoma’s values and its history,” the editorial stated. “To let it disappear and replace it with — what? parking or a gas station? — would say just the opposite.”
WSDOT soon withdrew the sale.
Jerry Pugnetti said the park never recovered from the Occupy movement days. He puts the blame squarely on WSDOT.
“The Washington State Department of Transportation has failed in its responsibility and commitment to maintain and preserve the park,” he said.
Solutions
This week, WSDOT said it continues to explore ways to find new ownership for Pugnetti Park. WSDOT said the state’s 18th Amendment along with state law requires the agency to sell the property at fair market value.
As both a Tacoma resident and chair of the Transportation Committee, Fey has been involved with discussions over Pugnetti Park for years. Fey acknowledges the challenges WSDOT faces over maintaining the park but he questions what the agency considers to be the fair market value of the property.
“You can’t do much other than a park with that property,” he said. “This has been years that we’ve had this stumbling block because of the over valuing of properties by WSDOT.”
WSDOT recognizes the problem, Fey said, and wants to overcome the impasse.
A possible solution, Fey said, is a bill he introduced this session that would allow WSDOT to rent or lease unused land to public agencies or non-profits for community purposes, including parks. The bill is currently before the rules committee and Fey isn’t sure if it will make it to the house floor this session.
If the bill passes, a likely tenant could be the Washington State Historical Society, according to Fey.
Other players
The State History Museum stands between the park and Union Station. It’s the first thing visitors see when they approach the museum from the south and enter the facility’s parking lot, according to museum director Jennifer Kilmer.
“We feel that it is in everyone’s best interest that Pugnetti Park be restored to its former beauty and is considering ways that the Society can help make that happen,” she said in a statement to The News Tribune.
In Tacoma, the park has long been on Mayor Victoria Woodards’ priority list. She wants to see it cleaned up, safe and well utilized.
“Over the years, I have been working with the Pugnetti family and others to find a solution for this park so that it could be added to our world-class parks system,” she said in a statement. “I am committed to continuing this work until we find the right solution.”
Like WSDOT, the city is not in the parks business. That’s why the city’s parks come under the aegis of Metro Parks Tacoma, according to city spokesperson Linda Robson.
“While we do have some one-off cases, it is not part of the city plan to get back into the parks business,” Robson said this week.
An obvious contender for new ownership would be Metro Parks Tacoma. In 2012, the agency said it wasn’t interested in acquiring the park.
Metro Parks is currently constructing Melanie’s Park, about 1/2 mile away on the Foss Waterway, and owns George H. Weyerhaeuser Jr. Park, a few feet away from Pugnetti Park underneath the SR 509 Bridge.
“We understand the public’s disappointment in the level of care this WSDOT-managed property is receiving,” Metro Parks Tacoma said in a statement to The News Tribune this week. “As an entry to both the Washington State Historical Society and our city, we are joined with community partners in seeking a solution that restores and maintains this gateway park. All involved encourage WSDOT to resume providing regular maintenance while it deals with its large backlog of surplus properties to process.”
As he stood amid the debris and graffiti this week, Jerry Pugnetti said he just wants the park returned as a welcoming space for all Tacomans.
“The real losers in this, it’s the City of Tacoma and all of the citizens in the city,” he said.
This story was originally published February 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
