Sumner visitor center opens in Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse | SLIDESHOW

Hundreds of Sumner-ites, including government and business leaders, had a Thursday sweet as pie at the grand opening of the city of Sumner’s visitor center.

Attendees had the chance to explore the visitor center corner of the Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse, nosh on snacks, drink rhubarb wine, mingle and witness an all-city council cherry rhubarb pie baking demonstration.

“It’s incredible,” visitor Jan Dwyer said. “The Cannery is a great central place for those of us who live and work out of Sumner. So it will bring people here (to the visitor’s center), and customers to the Cannery.”

The center is the brainchild of Shelly Schlumpf, executive director of the Puyallup/Sumner Chamber of Commerce.

Schlumpf thanked everyone involved in making the visitor center possible, including the city, the Cannery, sponsorship from Columbia Bank, and Arts Commissioner Lana Hoover, who designed a map of the city for the center.

“I would say that the job they did branding the center is spot on,” said Andrea Mensink of the Tacoma Regional Convention and Resort Bureau. “Their visitor center really encompasses what Sumner is all about and what life is really like in town.”

The visitor center takes up a small corner of the Old Cannery and features a painstakingly recreated 50s retro kitchen with era-appropriate original appliances, refurbished to newness. It places a heavy emphasis on Sumner’s branding as “Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World.”

To that end, Mayor Dave Enslow, Deputy Mayor Cindi Hochstetter and council members Leroy Goff and Ed Hannus used demonstrated the making of a cherry-rhubarb pie from scratch. Enslow’s crust-making acumen was upstaged by Hochstetter, culminating in the mayor bequeathing his chef’s hat to his deputy.

Afterward, the audience was served rhubarb pies that had been readymade beforehand.

Still to be accomplished is an application to the state transportation department for a visitor center road sign.

“WSDOT has rule over that,” city spokeswoman Carmen Palmer said. “I think we are there. So it’s just a matter of fulfilling that and then we’ll be there.”