Housing development could usher in a walkable look for Bremerton's Wheaton Way corridor

Editor's note: Click here to read a related story looking at five recent residential development projects along Bremerton's eastside corridor.

When he arrived in Bremerton nearly 30 years ago, Cary Bozeman, who’d eventually become the city's mayor, saw an eastside corridor populated by strip malls, fast-food restaurants, some small business and far more auto traffic speeding past than people walking from residential neighborhoods to businesses.

His mayoral term now 15 years in the past, Bozeman can now see some of the changes he envisioned taking place along Bremerton’s Wheaton Way and Highway 303, up to the city limit at Riddell Road and beyond. But he also believes the area still hasn’t reached its potential, and hopefully doesn’t take another 30 years to transform.

“You don't want to see what's there now,” Bozeman said. “You want to see something that's improved, that provides more residential, because it's close to all these services that people need.”

But the tide has been turning in recent years in the blocks from the Warren Avenue Bridge to the city's northern boundary.

The Wheaton Way Transit Center, which opened in 2019 at Broad Street now provides a transportation hub to a dense collection of townhomes directly to its west that have grown over the past few years, including the nearby Mills Crossing affordable housing complex. The Bremerton Station commercial development has recently transformed the corner of Riddell and Highway 303, tearing down a dilapidated retail building to make way for new restaurants that landscaped the highway frontage. Those are complemented by a popular fitness franchise, new Grocery Outlet, and a flooring store, bringing customers back to an aging strip mall that was vacant for years after departures of big box retailers like KMart and Lowe's. And the Riddell Road plaza, at the northern city limits, added the local Crain's Castle brewery, the renovated Tracyton Movie House, and several other retail or service storefronts.

Background: Bremerton Station development bringing Chipotle, grocery store and more

Now, population density seems to be following on all sides, with housing developments in various stages of completion crowding up against the commercial landscape. Projects that have come online in the past year or are pending soon now mark a shift in East Bremerton that could transform the pedestrian-deficit corridor into a “15 minute city” – a concept wherein residents would be able to access basic needs within a 15 minute walk from home.

“If you live in an apartment on Wheaton Way, can you actually walk out of your house and access most of what you really need for your life? Can you access medical care? Can you access grocery shopping? Can you go to a retail store and buy clothes? Can you go to the dentist?” Bozeman said. “We're transforming (East Bremerton) from an auto-centric major retail center to a mixed-use urban neighborhood.”

Housing the key to a walkable urban center

Storefront left vacant over the past decade or more along that stretch of highway spurred action from the city to promote a “more modern environment” that would promote both employment and housing, thus creating a pedestrian, urban neighborhood, said Mayor Greg Wheeler. Private investment is always key, but first the city made some zoning adjustments to facilitate a new type of growth.

“Prior decisions needed to be overturned,” Wheeler said. “It was a kind of a forced pedestrian-type of effort when, in reality, the housing that we're creating is going to actually promote the pedestrian look that we want.”

Wheeler cites a handful of initiatives that removed maximum density limits within the area’s general commercial zone, streamlined permitting for subdivisions and amended development standards to allow ground-floor commercial spaces to be used for housing in 2018 acted as a catalyst for transforming the area.

“We added a residential component to what was a commercial district… and then adjusting (maximum) height and to allow multi-family becomes a key right there,” Wheeler said. “It wasn’t one silver bullet.”

The economy of scale for developers then presents an opportunity for greater return on investment for multi-family projects, he said, and the need for this type of housing is growing.

Background: 320-unit apartment complex planned for Riddell Road in East Bremerton

As the population of Bremerton begins to grow, the city needs to attract healthcare workers, defense workers, teachers and more to the area while also providing housing options for those already residing in Kitsap County that are having a hard time finding housing in a highly competitive market, Wheeler said.

He expects to see high demand for the new influx of housing development, some of which have begun to welcome tenants in recent months and others than will soon. Five projects are already on the horizon in East Bremerton, linking the vision for population density and more commercial opportunities to rebuild a corridor. The string of construction starts just off the Warren Avenue Bridge with The Narrows and Clare 16-unit townhomes, the heads north to the Wheaton Landing 23-unit apartment building, the Blue Ridge Apartment complex at Riddell Road and Almira Drive, another 109 apartments at The Trailhead at the Preserve, at Almira Drive and Fuson Road, all apartment projects located east of Wheaton Way/Highway 303. West of the highway, bordered by Riddell Road on the north, the Kitsap Landing project will eventually feature 69 new single-family homes.

Related: Take a look at 5 residential housing projects in the works in East Bremerton

Build it and they will come 

For Wheeler, housing will set as a foundation for the hopeful transformation of East Bremerton.

“Now, we have vital housing – we're filling that need,” Wheeler said. “But the housing is helping to stimulate commercial growth in the corridor.”

Wheeler looked to the Eastside Village, where The Narrows at Clare is following a trend of new developments, noting that small businesses like Restaurant Lola on Lebo Boulevard are starting to follow.

Larger chain businesses are also following to the Wheaton Way corridor, such as Grocery Outlet Bargain Market that will cut the ribbon at their new location on Thursday right below the Blue Ridge Apartment Community. The grocery retailer had previously resided at a building less than a mile away for 33 years.

Store operators Darcee and Jeff Tennyson were asked for recommendations on a new location for the grocery retail store by the Grocery Outlet Bargain Market development team and suggested the location noting recent housing projects in the area.

“One of the exciting things about this area is they just built (new) apartments behind us and then brand new housing across the street from us (Kitsap Landing) and it's close to the bus transit which makes it convenient for people, and we just felt it was a really great location that was more convenient for everybody,” said Darcee Tennyson. “It's really a nice area.”

But the future of the Wheaton Way corridor isn’t just contingent on easier paths to development and incoming business, posits Bozeman.

Wheeler agreed, saying plans to make the area more walkable with safer intersections built out by safety islands, crosswalks with well defined lighting and synchronized traffic lights.

“Growth is a great thing, but it's a double edged sword because growth requires infrastructure to maintain quality of life. And if you go the other way, things get worse,” he said. “Without that, then we defeat the purpose of creating an urban neighborhood.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: East Bremerton housing developments could invite more business