Over the past couple of years, the City of Bainbridge Island has been transforming its town center. A massive makeover of Winslow Way is the latest effort in a series of public and private investments that have been taking place.
Back the mid-90’s the City made a deliberate decision to deflect the majority of new development away from the pastoral parts of the community and into the town center. Since then, town houses, apartments, condominiums and cottage houses have cropped up in an area around Winslow Way between the ferry terminal and Madison Avenue.
The City built a new city hall, along with a village square that serves as a location for the weekend farmer’s market. Other civic structures have been developed as a result of significant community financial contributions, including a performing arts theatre, a children’s museum and, recently, a dramatic new art museum. All these reflect the high level of interest in the arts among the island’s residents.
As the centerpiece of the town center, Winslow Way has lagged behind. For many years, it has served as a sort of linear commons, both in the physical sense and as a subject of debate — often with great heat — about the future of the city. This is a place that managed to fend off the invasion of chain restaurants and stores that has been the bane of many other communities.
Most of the Winslow Way stores are locally owned and display a homegrown quirkiness that has been gradually disappearing from many small towns. Bainbridge Island residents fiercely defend their turf; the political landscape is littered with both developers and public officials who were ripped apart by protracted periods of dissension over building height, density, parking, signs and almost every civic minefield one can list.
So it is all the more remarkable that despite this prickly atmosphere, Winslow Way has now been re-invented to incorporate state-of-the-art principles of sustainability. Previously, the street was nothing much to write home about. An overly wide swath of paving for cars and trucks was flanked by narrow sidewalks and angled rows of parking stalls. At several points, artists had added small touches to provide something interesting to look at or touch — a decorated bench, a planter. But for the most part, it was a pretty ordinary commercial thoroughfare (below).
