Our little downtown is growing up

Published 8:00 am Wednesday, December 10, 2003

It is fair to say that no one has been looking forward to the needed reconstruction of Winslow Way.

For sheer disruption – and certainly the number of businesses affected – street closures for utilities upgrades could make the 1992 High School Road rebuild look like Tonka trucks in a sandbox.

But it took something as innocuous as a new stop sign – considered by the city for the intersection of Winslow Way and Ericksen Avenue, but perceived by merchants as an impediment to traffic flow – to bring nearby business and property owners together to confront the city’s plans.

They, in turn, inspired a greater planning process still, one that may shape the downtown core for decades to come.

For Larry Nakata, Town and Country Market’s president, that new community dialogue is perhaps the best product.

“I really feel that when anyone is faced with significant change, it’s always good to get people together to talk to deal with those changes the best way possible for everyone,” said Nakata, a board member for the new Winslow Way Property Owners Association, which commissioned the planning effort with $75,000 in seed money proposed to be matched by the city in 2004.

“There’s no question we came together in the first place out of self-interest,” Nakata said. “But having gone through the process to date, I really feel we are providing something of value to all who are going to be impacted by a changing downtown.”

That “something of value” is manifest in a dramatic series of road, parking and utility proposals for Winslow Way, stretching from the highway to Grow Avenue. The ideas will make their formal debut this coming Monday, Dec. 15, from 3-5 p.m. in a merchants-sponsored presentation at City Hall.

Elements of the plan include:

l Two new roundabouts, one at the Winslow Way/Madison Avenue intersection, the other at a reconfigured meeting of Winslow Way and Bjune Drive. Bjune would be rerouted across what is now a private parking lot just east of T&C.

l Several below-grade parking garages within a block of Winslow Way. One, a 376-stall affair replacing a city-owned gravel lot next to City Hall, would be topped by residential units; a new retail alleyway would be created off Madrone Lane, fronting the garage with business and office space. A smaller garage could be carved out north of the Commons building.

l Creation of a new greenway on the Unocal property at the southwest corner of Winslow Way and SR-305. Seeking space for new bus-only lanes to the ferry terminal, Kitsap Transit has entered negotiations for purchase of the lot, fouled and vacant after years as a gas station site.

l New street and pedestrian linkages around properties planned for redevelopment, including Lundgren Station; more crosswalks at key points along Winslow Way; and opportunities for street trees and other treatments.

The proposals have been crafted by Bill Isley and others in the Bainbridge Architects Collaborative. But they are drawn largely from existing and overlapping documents as the Winslow Master Plan and the Non-Motorized Transportation Plan, making the goals of those plans more tangible.

The goal is to keep such “anchor” businesses as T&C and Winslow Clinic downtown, and to provide enough parking that all businesses can grow and expand.

“What we’ve done really done is thrown a lot of issues out on the table and say, ‘what do you think?’” architect Sean Parker said. “It’s up to the city and the community to say, ‘we like this, we don’t like this,’ and then we’ll see what happens.”

Previews of the drawing-board sketches are garnering a strong reaction from local merchants, and a positive one.

“I was totally blown away by the scope of it, the all-encompassing completeness of this plan,” said Linda Allen, owner of Fox Paw in Winslow Green. “I think the new plan is fabulous. It meets the needs of the residents, and will allow the business community to continue to exist.”

Ken Schuricht, owner of Winslow Hardware, said the ideas would meet parking needs and keep islanders coming downtown to shop.

“I think it’s really exciting to finally have plans for the downtown that encompass everything – property owners, business owners, diversity of the downtown – so the rest of us can stay downtown, and rents don’t get so out-of-hand that we can’t stay,” Schuricht said.

The proposals are as notable for what they seek to avoid as what they might bring.

Specifically, Isley is working with city public works officials on options for low-impact utility work to minimize the chaos that would come with closures in the city’s main commercial corridor.

“We can’t get through this project without impacting people,” said Randy Witt, public works director. “But we want to minimize that impact, physically and in terms of time.”

Needed utilities upgrades include water, sewer and storm drain systems, and possibly underground power.

How the planning process unfolds from here will determine project phasing, but Winslow Way could see some utilities work as early as 2005. Mayor Darlene Kordonowy called the timing “perfect.”

“It’s not slowing the city down in its timeline,” she said, “and the city’s planning will be so much more focused than it could have been before the property owners and business owners came together.”

Kordonowy said the city is sometimes perceived as being anti-business, but said the commitment to meeting downtown infrastructure needs “should not be ignored.”

Which raises the issue of funding: While various strategies are in play, a bond measure would almost certainly have to be put before voters for major improvements.

Rough numbers have been floating around, but Parker cautioned that how the city finances a parking structure, for example, would determine the needed public investment.

“We aren’t there yet, (because) we don’t know what the scope is going to be,” he said. “It depends on what the city can on take on as a manageable project.”

“There’s a lot of issues, here,” Isley agreed. “What we don’t want is for this to be another plan that sits on the shelf.”

Freelance writer Tina Lieu

contributed to this report.