Puyallup’s Sound Transit garage looks done, but isn’t. Building of Sumner’s hasn’t begun

Sound Transit riders can expect the new Puyallup parking garage to open soon, while the Sumner garage is still in the works.

In 2014, Sound Transit put in place a project to add 610 new parking spaces at the Puyallup station downtown. Originally, the project was projected to take two years to complete and was expected to be finished in early 2022.

However, through the span of two years, the garage finish date has been pushed back due to delays.

In May of 2022, The News Tribune reported that the Puyallup garage was estimated to be completed between October and December of this year. Sound Transit spokesperson David Jackson said last week that the plan is to open the Puyallup garage in November.

Most of the work that still needs to be done at the Puyallup garage regards safety improvements, Jackson said.

“The vast majority of the work at Puyallup that needs to be completed is not in the garage, it’s off-site. It’s the traffic improvements and the rail crossings. … Those safety improvements need to happen for the garage to open,” Jackson told The News Tribune.

The News Tribune reported in May that the project’s price tag was at $82.35 million.

As for the Sumner parking garage, Jackson explained Sound Transit is soliciting contracts and plans to go before the board this winter to get a baseline for the project’s cost. Jackson said the plan was for the Sumner garage to be advertised for contractors to bid in March 2020. However, the project was affected by the pandemic, such as through labor shortages, and there was uncertainty about how agency revenues would be affected by COVID-19.

The News Tribune reported in July 2019 that the $52.4 million garage’s completion date was delayed to 2022, a year later than originally planned.

The cost of the Sumner garage now isn’t clear. Jackson said a contractor is still being sought. He also noted that inflation and increasing construction costs are factors.

“The Puyallup one is done so that cost is fixed, but Sumner, we’ve not selected a company to build it and the board hasn’t approved the expenditures so we don’t know the number there,” Jackson told The News Tribune.

The Sumner garage will add about 500 parking spots for Sound Transit commuters.

According to Jackson, the plan for the Sumner garage is to begin construction in the summer of 2023 and to open it in 2025.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong date for when the Sumner garage was going to be advertised for contractors to bid. The plan was for it to be advertised in March 2020.