The bridge in Wright Park was installed by Evans’ team in 2017.

Kristi Evans’ fingerprints are all over Tacoma parks and playgrounds.

In her almost 34 years as a project manager in Parks Tacoma’s capital program, Evans has overseen planning, construction and improvements at almost all of the agency’s parks.

“Kristi has touched every park in our system to the benefit of the thousands of park users who have been well served by her expert delivery of those park improvements,” Marty Stump, Parks Tacoma’s chief planning officer, said during the Park Board’s recent recognition of Evans’ years of service. “Many of her projects have received awards for design and construction excellence.”

As she looked forward to her June 30 retirement, Evans reflected on how much has — and hasn’t — changed in those years.

“The community has always wanted a voice (in park planning),” she said, “but maybe what they’ve asked for has changed over time.”

Owen Beach, with its climate resiliant design, included sculpture and seating built well above the shoreline.

Community members are more focused on sustainability these days, but they also have nostalgia for spaces they remember as kids. Evans pointed to Owen Beach improvements as an example of balancing what people love about a place with making it more resilient to climate change.

“People still get the same feeling there, but everything is built higher to account for sea-level rise,” she said.

The first spraygrounds Evans designed and built were simple platforms or spouts, she said, and now they’re complex structures with recirculated water to conserve as well as entertain.

With her background in landscape architecture, she worked on projects supported by the 2005 and 2014 voter-approved bond proposals. As the 2026 bond package is about to kick off, Terry Jungman, Parks Tacoma’s capital improvement program manager, looked back on the two years he has worked with Evans.

Evans installing plants into the living wall in the Conservatory during its remodel in 2022.

“Part of the reason I think we became close is because we share the core value that the work we do in the capital program is a privilege,” Jungman said. “The opportunity to speak directly to the community, build incredible facilities, steward public dollars, all of it is a privilege and should be taken very seriously. We found we had this in common very early on.”

The park projects Evans reeled off as stand-out memories are as diverse as the community they serve.

She affectionately recalled Wright Park improvements as one of her first big projects to bring life back to the North End park. The master plan introduced a new pond bridge, basketball courts and playground, revitalizing the 27-acre historic park in the early 2000s. Upgrades to the Victorian-style W. W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in 2022 further enhanced the park.

Catherine Ushka’s Gas Station Park, with its tricycle track and climbing dome, completely transformed one of the city’s smallest parks on a former gas station site into a beloved neighborhood space.

Dickman Mill Park on the Ruston Way waterfront commemorates its history as the site of the last lumber mill in Tacoma’s Old Town by featuring the last known head saw in Washington.

Melanie’s Park under construction in October 2023. Evans oversaw the design and construction of this new park.

Melanie Jan LaPlant Dressel Park, one of Parks Tacoma’s newest parks, honors the site’s complicated history as the traditional homeland of the Puyallup Tribe, subsequent industrial development and reclamation of the Foss Waterway following Superfund remediation. Now, on any given day, kids and adults alike laugh and shout as they climb the rope tower and race down the spiral tube slide or admire the Coast Salish basket-weaving designs stamped into the concrete walkways.

“Kristi has set the standard for future project managers to follow,” Stump said, “and for that we express our heartfelt thanks to Kristi and her family for all that they have shared with us over years of dedicated service.”

It’s fitting that the project manager who infused sustainability, diversity and resilience into park improvements over the years would describe her post-retirement life as “organic.”

“I’m looking forward to the chance to decide what I want to do each day,” she said, adding that the list likely will include paddleboarding, hiking, cycling to breweries, spending time in her garden’s meditation space, travel and cheering at Sounders games.

Wherever she goes, Evans will take parks with her. A tattoo of a dragonfly, a bracelet of leaves and the word “parks” in script encircle her wrist to remind her of how much she has given and received from her work.

“Parks have been my life,” she said, as she looked out at the trees on the Parks Tacoma headquarters campus. “And they always will be part of my life.”

Evans in a crowd of attendees at the Dickman Mill reopening celebration, July 2021.