The City of Tacoma will break ground next week on the second phase of the Cheney Stadium Sustainable Stormwater Project.

Beginning this fall, contractors will install more porous asphalt in the parking lot, a large rain garden, pervious concrete sidewalks that will make getting to the game from Scott Pierson Trail and Tyler Street easier, and more than two acres of landscaping with 263 shade trees. The result will be a stadium with a parking lot that filters 10 acres of water on-site so that polluted rainwater doesn’t make it downstream to fish and wildlife. The project will use plants, trees and permeable soils to slow down and absorb water running off the stadium’s parking lot, which may be dirtied by vehicles with unfixed oil leaks or other dripping fluids.

Stan Palmer Construction was awarded the $1.5 million project, which includes up to $1 million in grant funds from the Washington State Department of Ecology with matching City of Tacoma and Cheney Stadium funding. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held outside of Cheney Stadium near the first base entrance to the field on Mon., Sept. 2 at 1:30 p.m.

The first phase of the project achieved Silver Greenroads Certification, helping make Tacoma home to the highest concentration of Greenroads-certified projects in the nation.