Heritage Park & Hops Alley

The work on the north point of Reuben A. Knoblauch Heritage Park and Hops Alley has started! Please follow all signage, including no parking signs.

A map of alternative parking is in the documents section on the right hand side of this project page. Please respect and follow neighboring properties and any private parking restrictions.

Improvements you’ll see after construction include inviting signage for Heritage Park and Hops Alley, improved seating and gathering space for daily use by the community as well as our popular events, pedestrian and site scaled lighting, additional ADA parking, pedestrian access, garbage collection organized in a new enclosure, landscaping, and enhancements to support flexible event space.

Background:

The concepts originated in 2020-2021 with the Main Street Visioning Plan, which you can still visit in the "Important Links'" section on the right hand side of this page. That plan also identified rebuilding the roads around Heritage Park as plaza-level woonerfs, which was completed in 2023 as part of the Town Center Utility Woonerf project. The plan prioritized purchasing the last privately held portion of the block at 902 Kincaid, which the City completed in 2022.

In 2022-2023, JETT Landscape Architecture + Design worked with the community and staff to re-imagine Reuben Knoblauch Heritage Park as a more active, useful heart of the city, for special events and everyday use. This work also identified improvements for the adjacent alley, naming it Hops Alley, to serve as a flexible event space and for a more accessible and inviting parking area for its day use.

In 2024, JETT continued that design for both the alley and park to prepare for future construction. That design phase was funded with a grant from Pierce County Lodging Tax.

The City of Sumner was recommended to receive funding from Pierce County Lodging Tax to construct the north point of Heritage Park and Hops Alley. Additional funding includes Sound Transit Sumner LTAC, and other local funds.

The City of Sumner applied for and was given a Conditional Use Permit (CUP-2024-0005) for the phased redevelopment of the Reuben A. Knoblauch Heritage Park block. The associated files are also available in the documents section under CUP-2024-0005 folder.

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