In late summer, the City of Pullman closed the path through Itani Linear Park for three weeks. The project was plumbing. According to the city's capital plan, it covers the pipes that link Itani's string of ponds and the point where that water leaves Itani and enters the pond system at Sunnyside Park. On Sunnyside Hill, the green strip from SW Center Street down to Sunnyside Park is a park and also a drainage line. If you walk it in that order, you're following the water.
The city's notice ran the closure from Monday, August 31, to an anticipated end date of Friday, September 18, 2026. The Whitman County Gazette reported the same schedule on September 10. The work came in two phases. From August 31, the paths between SW Center Street and SW Panorama Drive were closed. Around September 14, the stretch from SW Panorama Drive to Sunnyside Park closed too, so for those last few days the whole corridor was off limits.
What the pond project covers
The city's proposed 2025-2030 capital plan lists this work as project STW24-E01, the Itani Linear Park Pond and Stormwater Piping Improvements. It describes new inlet and outlet pipes for the series of ponds at Itani, along with concrete work and new pipe. It also covers changes to the inlet of the Sunnyside Park drainage system, which is where Itani's drainage ends and Sunnyside Park's ponds take over.
Nearly all of the money was planned for this year:
Line in the city's plan | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Planning and design | $5,000 | $0 | $0 | $5,000 |
Construction | $0 | $180,500 | $9,500 | $190,000 |
Project total | $5,000 | $180,500 | $9,500 | $195,000 |
The plan puts $180,500 of construction in 2026, which lines up with the September closure. It also leaves a $9,500 construction line for 2027. That's a planning figure, and it doesn't commit the city to another closure. The plan expects no added annual operating cost. Its policy basis is the city's stormwater program, which addresses both how much water moves through Pullman and how clean it is. Funding comes from the city's Stormwater Fund.
Over the same months, the city also had sidewalk crews on the streets that lead into the corridor. ESF Solutions, LLC of Walla Walla held the contract to replace broken sidewalk panels and grind down raised edges from August 3 through an anticipated finish of September 30, 2026. The work was spread across southwest Sunnyside Hill on Itani Drive, Alcora Drive, Sunnyside Drive, Meyer Drive, Campus View Drive, Mies Street, Marcel Street, Alvar Drive, and Crestview Street between Alvar and Sunnyside.
Walking it top to bottom
City park materials describe the pedestrian route as starting at Center Street, running through the Itani Linear Path, and ending at Sunnyside Park's shelter and the Cedar Street parking lot. Going in that direction, you follow the water.
- Start at SW Center Street. This is the top of the Itani path and the first segment that closed on August 31. The city lists the park at 950 SW Crestview Drive. Itani Park covers 7.45 acres, and the linear path adds another 7.1 acres.
- Walk the pond chain to SW Panorama Drive. The 2026 project targets the inlet and outlet pipes of these ponds. In the city's park inventory, walking and bird-watching are the path's listed features.
- Keep going from Panorama toward Sunnyside Park. This lower stretch closed around September 14. At its end is the junction the project targets, where Itani's drainage empties into Sunnyside Park's system.
- Finish at Sunnyside Park, 147 SW Cedar Street. The city's 2020 parks plan says a culvert carries Itani's drainage through the park.
The upper half of the corridor started as a gift. Rafik and Mary Sue Itani donated the land to the city as a natural linear park. Development began in 2006, and a small gazebo went up in 2010. The city's park inventory says paving of the path was finished in 2019.
Sunnyside Park's ponds are the end of the line
Sunnyside Park covers 25 acres. It has two ponds fed by a waterfall and joined by a creek, plus a picnic shelter with a barbecue area, a playground, tennis courts, a baseball field, volleyball standards, disc golf, and trails.
The city's 2020 parks plan describes Sunnyside's ponds as a closed system that's topped up with city water. Itani's drainage passes through the park in a culvert. That explains why the 2026 project's scope reaches all the way to Sunnyside Park's inlet instead of stopping at the end of the Itani path.
What the water brings in
Standing water and mature trees on a residential hill draw birds. eBird lists Sunnyside Park as a named hotspot with 125 species and 648 checklists. That covers the whole park, not just the ponds.
A checklist from Sunnyside Park on September 27, 2026, a little over a week after the Itani paths were set to reopen, gives a sense of the fall mix:
- Around the water: Mallard and Great Blue Heron
- In the trees and on the lawns: Northern Flicker, Black-billed Magpie, American Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, and Red-breasted Nuthatch
- Passing through or flocking up: Mountain Bluebird, Red Crossbill, Lesser Goldfinch, American Goldfinch, Dark-eyed Junco, and Yellow-rumped Warbler
The heron and the Mallard are water birds, and the park's water is the pond system at the bottom of the Itani drainage. The city lists bird-watching as a feature of the Itani path too, so the walk down from Center Street works as a birding route in its own right.
Palouse Audubon runs guided bird walks around the region. This season's listings have been at other sites, including a September 26 walk on the South Fork Palouse River.
Sunday afternoons belong to the disc golf course
The biggest scheduled use of Sunnyside Park this fall is the 18-hole course that winds through it. On UDisc, Sunnyside Park DGC is listed as a public-park course established in 1995. Its concrete tee pads and tee signs were donated and installed with help from the Palouse Disc Golf Club. The listing marks the course as mixed use, dog friendly, and cart friendly, with drinking water and restrooms.
"Mixed use" matters on this walk. The course and the trails share the same 25 acres, so walkers coming down from Itani on a league day will cross fairways with discs in the air.
The Palouse Disc Golf Club runs Sunday league rounds at Sunnyside. On October 18, UDisc listed a singles round from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by doubles from noon to 2 p.m. The next listed event is Sunnyside Doubles on Sunday, October 25, 2026.
The October 18 rounds will have wrapped by the time this posts. To skip league play on your walk, the listed Sunday hours are the ones to avoid. To watch a round, the October 25 doubles is the next one on the UDisc events list.
The corridor as one piece
From Center Street, the route runs past Itani's pond chain, across Panorama Drive, through the junction this year's project targets, and into Sunnyside Park's two ponds, waterfall, and creek. On a map it looks like two parks, but the city plans and budgets for it as one drainage line. The city's plan sets aside $180,500 for 2026 construction on the pipes and concrete that connect the two parks.
If you live near the Itani corridor and wonder how a home that backs onto a path, a pond, or Sunnyside Park compares with others on the hill, Krista Gross knows these streets and is glad to walk through it with you. Request a personalized home valuation and get a read on your home that accounts for the green space next door.
