Business Community Environment Government
After failed acquisition, undeveloped Eagles Ridge parcel still on PenMet’s’s radar screen
Unpaved peninsula: The Harbor’s hidden forests and fields
Note: Growing up on the Gig Harbor Peninsula used to entail some familiarity with the woods. If you knew the routes, you could cross the peninsula on trails, sticking to fields and forests (and occasionally crossing a country road). That’s much harder today, yet undeveloped land remains in the Gig Harbor area. How else could black bears surprise us so often? This story is part of an occasional series of articles that looks at these last undeveloped places — where they are, what owners plan for them, and whether they are likely to be preserved as forest and open space.
For PenMet Parks, a hilly, forested 114 acres fronting the Gig Harbor side of the Tacoma Narrows is the big land acquisition that got away. For now.
SBI Developing, a subsidiary of Puyallup-based Soundbuilt Homes, worked to create a subdivision on the site for well over a decade. Builders dubbed the property Eagles Ridge, for the raptors that nest there. Early in process, a union investment fund owned the land while SBI’s role was as a developer. But SBI gained ownership of the property in 2014, according to Pierce County property records.
This map, from PenMet’s grant application packages, shows the location of what the parks district called Narrows Park West.
Building challenges at Eagles Ridge
Building on the site wasn’t going to be easy. The property has steep grades and extensive wetlands. A waterway called Doc Weathers Creek flows down the hillside into Puget Sound. SBI’s development would have required a long – and expensive – road to reach the flat, buildable area in the southwest portion. The road, in turn, would need a 1,000-foot-long, 10- to 18-foot-high retaining wall.
The area suited for building houses is relatively small. In 2012, The Pierce County Hearing Examiner approved SBI’s request for a plat that allowed just 23 building lots, with 77 percent of the property to be left in open space. For a developer, that’s relatively little payoff when viewed alongside the substantial required investment.
“Cost-prohibitive” is the term that Kurt Wilson, one of SBI’s owners, used to sum up what has held back development at Eagles Ridge. The hearing examiner’s approval of SBI’s plan for the site expired in March 2020.
But the rugged features that pose a challenge to developing Eagles Ridge can look attractive to an organization such as PenMet, whose goals include environmental conservation and preserving open space. Great Peninsula Conservancy (GPC), a Bremerton-based land trust dedicated to preserving natural areas in West Puget Sound, has partnered with PenMet on other land acquisition projects. It brought the idea of an Eagles Ridge buyout to the parks district in March 2020.
Eagles Ridge, aka Narrows Park West
Growth is something PenMet values. Adding 114 new acres to PenMet’s existing 650 acres of parkland would represent an enormous bite. Among PenMet’s existing properties, Eagles Ridge is eclipsed in size only by 122-acre McCormick Forest Park.
(In fact, Eagles Ridge is one of the biggest privately-owned, undeveloped properties on the Gig Harbor Peninsula – probably second only to 1,000-Acre Wood, on the east slope of Crescent Valley. That property is currently available for activities such as hiking and biking. But its owner, Gaines Investment Trust, has threatened to withdraw that public access if Pierce County adopts zoning proposals it views as unfavorable.)
Eagles Ridge also offered a major synergy to the parks district in that it sits next to Narrows Park, an existing PenMet property, with a beachfront picnic area and stunning views of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. By acquiring SBI’s land next door, which PenMet began referring to as Narrows Park West, the parks district could instantly quadruple the area of Narrows Park, add 356 feet of shoreline and make possible activities at the site that require more space, including disc golf, mountain biking and even, potentially, a zipline.
A dirt road inside the Eagles Ridge property. PenMet’s plans for the property included allowing the forest to close in on roads such as this one until they became hiking trails.
PenMet and GPC engaged with the property’s owners. Within a few months, the park district’s board of commissioners authorized applications for county, state and federal grants for the project, including money from the Pierce County Conservation Futures program. The district judged that it needed about $3 million to entice SBI Developing to part with Eagles Ridge.
Developer may have tapped the brakes
Talks toward acquiring the land moved forward until … they didn’t.
Parties to the negotiations declined to state the exact reason why the deal fell through, but it appears SBI backed away.
In a December 20, 2021 letter to an official of the Washington’s Recreation and Conservation Office, which coordinates state and federal grants, PenMet Executive Director Ally Bujacich wrote: “PenMet Parks has diligently been in negotiations with the Narrows West landowner; however, the owner is no longer a willing seller and a purchase and sell agreement has failed.”
At least some of the funding seemed secure. According to Andriana Fletcher, Pierce County public information specialist: “In 2021, PenMet Parks requested $1.5 million (from the Pierce County Conservation Futures Program) but requested an additional $1 million after the application was submitted. Pierce County Council approved the $2.5 million award on August 31, 2021.”
But in a Sept. 8, 2023 e-mail to the Conservation Futures Coordinator Christina Chaput, PenMet Interim Director of Park Services Sue O’Neill wrote, “Please consider this email PenMet Parks notice of withdrawal for the Narrow West project. We will look at reapplying in the 2025 Conservation Futures for Narrows West or another project.”
According to SBI’s Kurt Wilson, the land sale to PenMet didn’t go through because “we’re not ready to do that right now.” Asked to elaborate, he said “Don’t worry about it. It’s my property,” and terminated the conversation.
Environmental issues at Eagles Ridge
All parties to the negotiation said a deal transferring Eagles Ridge/Narrows Park West to PenMet could still occur, though Wilson predicted such a sale was at least 5 years off.
Whether Eagles Ridge/Narrows Park West becomes parkland or a residential development, its owner will need to deal with one of the site’s major downsides: environmental contamination.
Eagles Ridge is about 3.5 miles southwest of the former Asarco copper smelter in Tacoma. It sat for years beneath an emissions plume that deposited lead and arsenic in its soil. Arsenic contamination at the site – and in the soil of much of the Gig Harbor Peninsula’s southeast corner – typically has double level of arsenic found on the western side of the peninsula, according to the Washington Department of Ecology’s Dirt Alert map.
Testing confirmed high levels of contaminants at Eagles Ridge. In 2018, SBI entered Eagles Ridge into a voluntary cleanup plan with DOE that calls for removal of significant amounts of soil in the site’s developable areas. Cleanup costs will be in the millions of dollars, SBI’s Kurt Wilson said.
Bujacich, who declined an interview, also did not answer e-mailed questions about how the cleanup would affect an acquisition of the property by PenMet, including whether a park would be required to perform a cleanup as extensive as would be required for a residential development.
Continuous greenbelt
Proponents of Eagles Ridge becoming parkland give one more reason why it should stay undeveloped. In its current state, the property forms part of a continuous greenbelt extending from Puget Sound at the far southern end of the Gig Harbor Peninsula, northward as far as Madrona Links golf course and Gig Harbor city limits.
The Eagles Ridge (aka Narrows Park West) site is part of a continuous, forested greenbelt at the southeastern end of the Gig Harbor Peninsula, stretching from the Tacoma Narrows north to Madrona Links and Gig Harbor city limits. This land includes both Eagles Ridge and the adjacent Narrows Park on Puget Sound, and undeveloped land owned by Pierce County to the east and north of Tacoma Narrows Airport. Map by Tony De Paul, GIS specialist, Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer.
At the far southern end of this belt are Narrows Park and Eagles Ridge, both with shoreline on the Tacoma Narrows. East of Eagles Ridge, Pierce County owns a vertical strip of forest considered part of Tacoma Narrows Airport. Both this strip and Eagles Ridge reach north as far as Stone Drive.
North of Stone Drive is a large rectangular parcel, also owned by the county, which accommodates the airport’s runway safety area (RSA). It extends to 36th Street, across which lies Madrona Links. The land north of Stone Drive is forested, although the airport has proposed some tree removal on that property and elsewhere around the facility, in order to improve flight safety and meet Federal Aviation Administration standards.
Airport adjacent
Tim Toerber, a pilot and member of the Tacoma Narrows Airport Advisory Commission, notes that keeping all this land undeveloped is good for the airport. Open spaces are generally more harmonious neighbors to airports than populated areas.
But just as importantly, the forested land stretching from the Tacoma Narrows to the city of Gig Harbor – including the Eagles Ridge site – conserves some of the last contiguous wildlands on the peninsula. Toerber said, “Coyotes, deer and black bears that have been displaced from so many other” areas on the Gig Harbor Peninsula still make their homes there in “one of the most substantial remaining greenbelts” in the area.