PAST PROJECTS
Below is a list of both past and ongoing projects. Through all of them, we successfully raised funds and effectively used them to positively transform our community.
Removing Barriers Project
Community events, park, trail and beach clean-up projects, plays, festivals and other outdoor activities provide opportunities that encourage people to have fun, participate in their community, connect with each other, and contribute to the community’s strength. Sadly, many with disabilities cannot participate due terrain barriers of public spaces where such events are held.
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Boundless Playground
In 2008, the Foundation embarked on a on a unique and life enhancing project for children and their families in the greater Pierce county region – a certified Boundless™ playground. The playground, the first of its kind in the Northwestern United States, is located at the 98-acre Sehmel Homestead Park. The park opened in 2010 with many amenities such as picnic facilities, a pavilion and amphitheater, a rhododendron garden, ball fields, tennis and basketball courts, an extensive trail system and many other recreational opportunities.
Donkey Creek Chum Festival
Every year, the greater Gig Harbor community celebrates the return of salmon to our local waters. Since 1972, the Gig Harbor Commercial Fishermen’s Club has incubated salmon eggs at Donkey Creek, releasing over 1 million fry into the Gig Harbor bay annually. The Chum Festival serves to remind us that the quality of our water, and the habitat it supports, connects us all. This year, the Parks & Environment CAB, has taken on an important role in assuring the Chum Fest legacy continues.
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Join us as we recognize new ways to improve and protect our waterways.
Knight Forest
In late 2010, the Foundation maximized the opportunity to secure the 19-acre “Knight Forest” property adjacent to the Harbor Family Park site. The Foundation’s leadership worked closely with the heirs, Steven and Larissa Kesling, for several years to help make this purchase possible. In this project, the Foundation acted in an interim capacity to acquire the land for future acquisition by PenMet Parks.
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SSI Community Visioning Workshops
Partners: Gig Harbor & Key Peninsula organizations and agencies
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Beginning in mid-2012, the Foundation initiated the first phase of the three year Self-Sufficiency Initiative (SSI), a significant effort to assess the diverse and unmet needs of the community and the capacities of organizations that work to provide programs and services across the Foundation’s core service areas.
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9/11 Memorial Project
Future Location: Station 51, 6711 Kimball Drive, Gig Harbor, WA
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The Gig Harbor 9/11 Memorial Project will serve to honor the lives and acts of heroism that took place on September 11, 2001 and the days following. Efforts undertaken by Gig Harbor Firefighter Ryan Kress and Gig Harbor Fire & Medic One brought WTC Artifact #H-0028C to our community. Rusted and twisted, each piece of memorial steel is a symbol of a day that changed our nation.
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Harbor Family Park
In 2005, a few visionary citizens stepped forward to provide our community with a valuable last chance to purchase 19-acres of land, previously slated for residential development, to create a much needed multi-use recreational park. By mid-2006, the Foundation took on the charge to help PenMet Parks make this park a reality for our community.
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