Community Government

City may explore putting stormwater park at property it owns on Soundview Drive

The city of Gig Harbor is considering building a stormwater park at a residential property it owns on Soundview Drive.

The city hopes to obtain grant funds to pay for a feasibility study at the site, 7601 Soundview Drive. It would collect public input before making any decisions.

A stormwater park both manages stormwater runoff and provides recreational opportunities. A majority of the funding for the feasibility study will come from a $110,000 grant that the Puget Sound National Estuary Program (PSNEP) offered the city. The estuary program has identified stormwater as an area to focus on for strategic restoration of Puget Sound, which is why it is offering this grant.

The city will not need to provide matching funds, and will only need to provide $10,000 of city stormwater funds to support a land survey.

The city of Gig Harbor owns this home at 7601 Soundview Street. It is considering building a stormwater park there. Photo by Vince Dice

Stormwater park concepts

“This project is a grant-funded project just to see what possibility there is of putting stormwater management at the site in conjunction with whatever else the city wants to use that property for,” Michael Abboud, the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Coordinator, explained at a Gig Harbor City Council study session on Dec. 11, 2025. “It’s not going to be an exclusive stormwater site. It’s, ‘How can we integrate stormwater into whatever the city chooses to put in that location?’ “

Abboud said the feasibility study would not obligate the city to build the stormwater park. Even if the city decides to pursue the stormwater park, it would not necessarily have to remove the house on the Soundview property.

The stormwater park, he said, could take several forms. For instance, he said, the whole thing could be underground, or it could be incorporated into art, as in the case at a Kitsap County stormwater park in the community of Manchester. He also pointed to Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park’s stormwater park design, which involves cascading rain gardens.

Where would the runoff go?

Several members of the public and now-former Councilmember Jeni Woock wanted to know exactly how the stormwater would flow, and where the hazardous materials removed from the stormwater in treatment would go.

The city’s stormwater currently runs to an outfall underneath the Maritime Pier, Abboud said. However, over time, this outfall has eroded the shoreline and created a “net loss of ecological function.”

If the city were to build a park, Abboud said, it would run neither through neighborhoods nor Soundview Forest. The stormwater would still run into the bay.

Hazardous materials would be contained, even as the treated water was released back into the system.

“Typically,” Abboud explained, “the stormwater trickles through some sort of filter or soil that cleans the water as it goes through. Then once it leaves, it doesn’t carry the pollutants with them.”

“The pollutants stay … in the soil, if it’s a soil-based—whatever it is, that gets replaced every so often,” he continued. “The soil or the media will get removed and disposed of as hazardous waste and then replaced with fresh media. … [Monitoring this] would be part of our operations and maintenance plan for the stormwater facility, which would be a part of the park.”

What about all that water?

Councilmember Le Rodenberg noted that there is quite a bit of stormwater, and asked whether there was a way to recycle that water for irrigation in city parks and other public areas.

Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm explained that there is too much runoff for the city to store it all. However, he replied, in response to Rodenberg’s follow-up question about using some of it, the city could explore including underground cisterns in the stormwater park as part of the feasibility study.

Location, location, location

Councilmember Ben Coronado worried that the Soundview location wouldn’t be particularly impactful. He asked if the city could instead conduct the park study in the Pioneer or Peacock Hill areas.

While Abboud said that he thought exploring other areas would be “a great idea,” the city would have to find public property on which to situate it.

Additionally Abboud said a stipulation attached to the city’s 2018 purchase of 7601 Soundview Drive requires that the city stop renting it out as a residence, and that it put the area to public use by 2028.

He also said that building a stormwater park there would align with the city’s Judson Street Subarea Plan. In its biennial budget, the city planned to put $100,000 towards building multifamily housing around Judson Street, following passing zoning laws that allow for increased density in the area.

“Because it’s in that general area, there is a possibility of sizing it and siting it in a location where future development might be able to plug into it and recoup costs for the city as part of that … so that [developers] can meet their stormwater requirements,” Abboud said. “I can’t speak too much into … if that was possible, because we haven’t done the studying yet, but there is a potential there because of its proximity to Judson Street.”

Overall, city councilmembers said they were in favor of the idea. The city has not yet signed to accept the grant.