New cafe with outdoor seating coming to historic building in Pierce County
The once-vacant former Bank of America site in downtown Sumner will be renovated into a mixed-use site.
The building at 921 Alder Ave. was the bank from the early 1980s to 2018. The building was constructed in 1948, according to the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer’s portal.
It sat vacant until May 2026 when a group of old friends bought the property. The friends call their business Dirty Dimes LLC and are from the Edgewood, Sumner and Puyallup area. Dalton Arndt, the project manager and representative for the developer, told The News Tribune recently that there are two primary partners who have majority ownership for the building, and three who have minority ownership.
“This had been vacant since 2018, I believe, and sat for a while, and we saw the offer get listed,” Arnd said.
Arndt said once finished the building will turn into two business spaces. One part of the building will be an office for a financial group. The side that faces Main Street will be a new coffee shop called Huxdotter Coffee. The cafe will have a full kitchen and will also serve beer and wine in the afternoon.
There will be seating inside the building for the coffee shop, with additional bistro tables on the sidewalk. Arndt said they are trying to determine if there can be additional outdoor seating.
Huxdotter Coffee has drive-thru locations in North Bend, Auburn, Renton and Snoqualmie, according to its website. Its new location in Sumner will have two drive thru lanes, Arndt said.
Downtown Sumner has a couple coffee shops, including Craft 19 that sits across the street from the construction site. One of the differences with Huxdotter Coffee is that it will stay open later because of its bar, he said.
“... they are pulling beer and wine permits, so they plan to stay open later into the afternoon, bring some more activity to Main Street in the evening hours,” Arndt said.
Preserving the building’s history
While there will be new additions through construction, some history that was encased in the building will be preserved, according to Arndt.
Arndt said the earliest businesses he knows of at the site were a drug store and Seattle First National Bank in the 1940s. A news clipping featured through the Sumner Historical Society described the building as “the most modern in every feature.”
Another clipping from the historical society showed that in 1891 the wood structure was built and called the Shipley building. Their very first occupants were a church and grocery shop. The wood structure burned down in 1914. The site was used as a service station through the early 1900s until the current building was constructed in 1948 to house a drug store and bank.
Arndt said the drive thru area, which is adjacent to the main building, used to be a theater. Painted murals that had been inside the theater were uncovered on the walls of the building by the drive thru when construction workers were removing the bank’s old material. “June 5, 1936” was handwritten on a large mural that crews uncovered.
“ ... and especially with the little note, we’re gonna probably seal over that and make sure it’s protected, you know, for future when it gets uncovered,” he said.
The original brick that was hidden from the material used for the old Bank of America building was uncovered during the first month of construction. Arndt said they want to save as much of the exposed original brick as possible, which people in the area will see in parts of the building.
“(The brick) was all covered up. All the brick, everything. It was in a very ugly marblecrete finish that actually was full of asbestos,” he said. “So we had to basically tent the building on all sides, and they had pressurized fans and specialized systems as they were coming through here and scraping that all off. The first month of construction was basically getting all of that off the building.”
Arndt said the developers are working with the historical society and city to put a panel on the outside of the building that talks about its history.
Timeline of construction
Arndt said May 20 is when work started on the building. The developers are trying to complete construction by the end of the year.
“We’re trying to work as fast as we can. We have to do design review still, but given the amount of support, shouldn’t be too big of an issue, and then we have to do the actual renovations to the exterior,” he said. “We’re really trying to target year-end completion because we do know the tenants want to be in their space as well before year-end.”
Arndt said the coffee shop hopes to open before the end of the year, but it likely will happen in early 2027.
