Plans for new neighborhood park in Puyallup underway. Trail may connect to Wildwood
Community members in Puyallup will soon have another neighborhood park they can enjoy near the intersection of 12th Ave. SE and 13th St. SE.
The Pierce County Council approved funding for six projects Aug. 31 “aimed at open space preservation and salmon habitat restoration,” according to a press release from the Office of the Pierce County Council. The site in Puyallup is one of the projects.
The six projects cost more than $6.2 million total, according to the press release. Funds will come from the county’s Conservation Futures fund, which has $7 to 9 million reserved for the 2022-2023 biennium.
Money for the Conservation Futures fund comes from a tax the county imposed for the purpose of “conserving land within Pierce County to ensure healthy salmon populations, sustainably managed forests, locally grown food and publicly accessible open space for recreation and use by county residents,” according to the press release.
Puyallup asked the county for $800,000 to kick-start the Puyallup project, also referred to as the LaBelle property. The project is about 20 acres large. It would surround the west, south and east sides of the Diamond Sports Training Center at 1217 13th St. SE.
The proposed project would “mix active and passive recreation” by implementing a trail loop, playground, dog park, restrooms and parking, according to the press release. It could also connect to Wildwood Park via trail.
The park may have the same components as Sam Peach Park at 1621 10th Ave. NW, city spokesperson Eric Johnson said. The park itself may take up 2 to 3 acres while the rest will be preserved as a natural area, he said.
“That’s kind of what we would be envisioning, but we’re very, very, very early in the stages of that,” Johnson said.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Department has a strategic plan that identified long-term goals, including building a neighborhood park in the southeast area of Puyallup, Johnson said.
“There aren’t any neighborhood parks over there,” Johnson said. “We’ve been looking at this as a potential site.”
The city will use the funding it receives from the county to purchase the LaBelle property from an owner who has been trying to sell it to the city for “quite some time,” Johnson said.
The county ranked all six projects from top priority to least and the Puyallup project ranked fourth, which means the city would be fourth in line to receive funding, Johnson said. The county will start disbursing funds in January 2022.
“Timeline-wise, it’s going to be quite a ways off before we can actually go through the process of purchasing the property,” Johnson said. “This is a project that’s going to be several years out, but the grant award is a key step in that process.”
The other five projects include the North Creek Salmon Heritage Site and an open area west of Tacoma Narrows Park near Gig Harbor, McDermott Point on the Key Peninsula, Parkland Prairie in Parkland and an open area near Marine View Drive in Tacoma.
