University Place, WA

University Place carries the name of a university that never arrived. Puget Sound University bought 420 acres along Grandview Drive in the early 1890s, intending to move its campus from Tacoma. Financial trouble in 1893 cost the school the land before construction began, but the name remained attached to the surrounding community. Nearly eight square miles of unincorporated Pierce County finally became a city in 1995. The sequence left a young municipality with an old place-name and no inherited downtown. The city later created a central gathering place around Market Place West.

Town Center now concentrates the Civic Building, Market Square, housing, shops, and the Village at Chambers Bay. Over the decade leading to 2026, new streets, sidewalks, parks, residential development, and retail turned the area into a mixed-use civic and commercial center. It is one of three principal business districts; the others follow 27th Street and the city’s northeast side. The districts give University Place several commercial settings despite its compact size. Market Square also carries much of the city calendar. In summer 2026, eight Wednesday concerts ran there from July 8 through August 26, and Duck Daze moved from its parade to an afternoon gathering at the nearby Village at Chambers Bay. The streets and square give the 1995 city a civic core built after incorporation.

Grandview Drive leads south from that center to Chambers Creek Regional Park. Its 930 acres lie within University Place, with over two miles of Puget Sound shoreline and trails linking meadows, overlooks, and a pedestrian bridge to the beach. The regional park also contains two and a half miles of creek and canyon immediately north of Steilacoom. The property had served the lumber industry, a railroad center, and a gravel mine before its reinvention. Chambers Bay Golf Course opened on the reclaimed ground and hosted the Pacific Northwest’s first U.S. Open in 2015. Golf occupies only part of the county-owned site. The Soundview and Grandview trails form a loop above the water, and a pedestrian bridge branches from it to the beach. North Meadow adds a playground and event lawn inland. From the bluff, the beach, golf course, and reclaimed industrial ground share one sweep of Puget Sound.

Curran Apple Orchard preserves a smaller working landscape farther north on Grandview Drive. Mary and Charles Curran planted the orchard in 1951, and local organizing secured county conservation funds to preserve it as a park in 1993. The 7.33-acre property contains roughly 200 apple trees maintained by volunteers. Its bandshell and lawn host summer concerts, while the annual Cider Squeeze turns the fruit harvest into a recurring community event. The 2026 calendar scheduled four Thursday concerts beginning July 23, putting Wednesday performances at Market Square and Thursday music in the orchard during the same summer weeks. A summer evening can move from a deliberately built civic square to music among apple trees that survived the city’s suburban development.