Metro Parks Tacoma announcement.
Tacoma’s Thea Foss Waterway has a complex history, from Puyallup Tribal home through gritty industrial heritage and toxic cleanup to burgeoning urban neighborhood. Now the waterway is about to get a park that honors that history with a unique design that brings together play features and storytelling in a peaceful green space.
That park is Melanie’s Park, and Metro Parks Tacoma is about to create it. Construction is underway on the $4.7 million waterfront gathering and play area.
A PARK IS BORN
Formally titled Melanie Jan LaPlant Dressel Park after the beloved Tacoma banking leader who passed away in 2017, Melanie’s Park is a bond-funded neighborhood park that’s been awhile in the making. The vision began in 2016 with the Foss Waterway Development Authority spearheading fundraising. The land was transferred to Metro Parks in 2021 and designs were completed with community feedback. In late 2022, the City of Tacoma completed a stormwater interceptor project traversing the property beneath the park’s footprint.
More than half of the funding for the park’s $4.7m budget comes from sources matching the $2.2m in voter-approved 2014 bonds. This includes over $1.2m in private donations, $750,000 from City of Tacoma, $490,000 in a Washington State commerce grant and $50,000 from Pierce County. These partner resources are enabling Metro Parks to create a space that far exceeds park improvements that bond funding alone could provide.
Dozens of private donors also contributed to the fundraising, including foundations, friends of Melanie Dressel and many employees of Columbia Bank, which Dressel helped found and served as its president and chief executive officer since 2000 and 2003, respectively.
Now, Pease Construction has begun building the park to a design that blends play, storytelling and rest into its three-quarters of an acre.
PLAY & STORYTELLING
On the street side, bike and ADA parking, restrooms and an event pavilion give way to a plaza and play mound. A whimsical, climbable tower with a curvy slide overlooks the plaza on one side and the waterfront on the other. A “log jam” structure encourages more climbing play, while native plants add tranquility and help filter storm runoff.
The lapping water is viewable from benches along an esplanade running the width of the park. It adds another segment to the walkway that will eventually connect the entire waterway, from the Museum of Glass on the south end to Thea’s Park on the north. For protection of a waterline environmental cap, no water access will be available via Melanie’s Park.
The center of the plaza is where the real storytelling happens. The park sits on the traditional homeland of the Puyallup Tribe, who have lived on and stewarded the land since time immemorial and continue to do so today. Interpretive signs will describe the Puyallup Tribe’s historic and continued presence on the waterfront, Lushootseed names for Mt. Rainier and the Puyallup River that flows from it near the waterway, and the outcome of the local Fishing Wars on treaty rights. Designs from Puyallup Tribal artists will be stamped into the concrete.
“It is vital to connect park visitors with the land’s original inhabitants, especially with the goal of preserving and protecting the local environment,” said Claire Keller-Scholz, planning and asset administrator for Metro Parks, who has been working closely with the Tribe’s Historic Preservation Office on the signage and art.
HISTORY OF THE SITE
After European settlement, the waterfront became a booming industrial hub, with trains and boats transporting goods across the country and beyond. Enormous cedar logs, cleared from the region’s forests, were shunted down to paper and pulp mills which dumped toxic waste directly into the waters of the Salish Sea (Puget Sound).
By 1983, the industry had so contaminated the water that the area was designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. A massive 12-year cleanup completed in 2006 allowed the Thea Foss Waterway to become an inviting neighborhood of apartments, museums, restaurants and water activities. Thea’s Park, also part of the Metro Parks system, anchors the district at the north end with beach access and a stunning view over Commencement Bay.
“Over the last few decades, Thea Foss Waterway has been transformed from toxic cleanup site to vibrant waterfront neighborhood,” said Metro Parks Board President Andrea Smith. “Metro Parks is excited to add another chapter to that story by creating a green space for play, rest and community gathering, and we’re grateful to our partners for helping make that possible.”
ABOUT MELANIE JAN LAPLANT DRESSEL
Melanie Jan LaPlant Dressel (1952-2017) was a Tacoma banker and community leader. Originally from Colville, Washington, she rose through the Bank of California and Puget Sound Bank, eventually helping found Columbia Bank, where she worked until her sudden passing in 2017. A devoted wife, mother and grandmother, Dressel also served on many community boards, garnering awards for her business and community leadership.
“Melanie was an extraordinary leader and visionary,” said James Will, president of the Titus-Will Families Foundation, who served with Dressel as chair of Columbia Bank. “Her caring imprint on our community will carry on for years to come. It is very fitting this park is named in her honor as she recognized the need for local families to recreate in the Foss Waterway community and put the wheels in motion to make it a reality.”
Metro Parks anticipates completing the park by spring 2024.
LEARN MORE: At metroparkstacoma.org/melanies-park/
