New Plans for Bayside Development Include Retail & Housing

Updated Sept. 5 at 10 p.m.

By Margie Doyle

The Bayside now, abandoned and blocking the East Sound waterfront

Call them green, call them visionary, call them developers. A group of long-time Orcas Island residents with an interest in the livelihood of the Eastsound waterfront presented preliminary design plans for the site now occupied by the closed “Vern’s Bayside Restaurant” to the Eastsound Planning Review Committee(EPRC) last month.

The plans for “Bayside,” as the project is called, incorporate a mixed-use building that houses residential condominiums and one commercial retail space fronting on mainstreet. At the August 6 EPRC meeting, the plans included four waterview condominiums. Since then the developers, still pencilling out the numbers,  are considering more residential units.

The preliminary design concept for The Bayside, where Vern’s Bayside Restaurant now sits closed. Looking west on Main Street, from North Beach Road towards the waterfront park.

Unique aspects of the project  include parking provisions for “smart cars” that the planner say may be included in the price of the condominiums. They have struggled with parking considerations, among other major hurdles to developing the site.

The Bayside planners — Bob Maynard, Bob Shipstad, Gordon, coordinated by Mariah Buck,  freely admit that any development will be at significant expense,  given:
enlarging the existing water line;
shoreline protections;
and especially excavation, because the property, zoned Village Commercial, occupies Native American burial grounds.

At the August meeting, Bob Maynard, Orcas resident and experienced resort planner, said it was “very difficult to make the numbers work. I don’t think there’ll be any profit; I just think this project needs to be done rather than to let the property sit there year after year.”

The group estimated costs for the permitting process alone at a minimum of $50,000. Mariah Buck said that their research indicates the best form of foundation a six-inch pile pillar; “We need an archeological permit just to drill and see where the pillars can go.”

The Bayside group started meeting about a year ago to pencil out their vision and research the possibilities. They envision selling the condominiums to local buyers who may not want to maintain non-residential property and to who do want to live in the “urban” hamlet of Eastsound.

Later in August, Mariah Buck said, “In order to make the numbers work and make the project financially viable, we are increasing the total number of units.  The good news is that this will reduce the retail sales price of the condos, hopefully making them more affordable to more people.  We are also still having challenges with the parking, and may ultimately have to secure some off-site parking nearby.  We are adamant about keeping commercial/retail space to tie the building in to the rest of down town.  And, lastly, we are making the overall appearance of the building much more traditional to tie in to the other buildings in Eastsound.”

At the August 6 presentation to the EPRC, Gordon Walker, who has resided for over eight years on Orcas, described the challenge of developing the vacant site: How to reposition a piece of property that would not succeed well as a restaurant, to “bring living back into the village and to bring back to town “missing ‘eyes on the street’ that actually live there.”

Also, Walker and the others are dedicated to  incorporating the “noble, contemporary and historic in the design esthetic.”

“What you see is a concept,” Walker emphasized. He asked for feedback as to design guidance and community input.

EPRC member and architect Fred Klein reviewed the development “dilemma” for Eastsound: “It’s commonly believed we have a unique character. When it became apparent after the Our House building [construction] that there was a potential for new construction to overwhelm the character of the village, I helped formulate simple architectural guidelines, in terms of lot coverage, scale,and landscaping.

“We recognized that Eastsound wasn’t a village that had an ‘intense architectural identity,’ such as an Italian hill towns, or a Cotswold village, but we had buildings that we were proud of, such as the Episcopal church. That led us to issues of scale and form and a limited material ‘vocabulary’ that would give architects sufficient guidance to minimize damage from [out-of-synch scale or  materials].

Buck said that group had been planning in compliance with the Eastsound waterfront access plan and the Eastsound Sub-area Plan, and cross- referencing with village commercial uses.

EPRC member Rick Hughes said that conversation with County Senior Planner Colin Maycock may assist the group in developing a retail plan. Hughes said that marine-based retail activities would grant developers “100 percent rebuild.”

At the EPRC meeting, members in general expressed approval for the general design. Rick Hughes said, “I applaud you doing it, and bringing life back into the community.” He added that his main concern was the parking.

County Council Chair Patty Miller, who formerly served on the EPRC, said that she would want the residential elements to be for permanent, rather than vacation, housing.

A preliminary timeline suggests that the project may be completed in 2015,  although development and construction costs and restrictions of land itself present significant known challenges; “One of the reasons the property has sat vacant is there’s  no way to nail down variables until you start excavations, you have to deal with guaranteed unknowns,” said Buck.

She said the group has tried to deal with the parking concerns in a progressive way that mitigates the stress of parking in town, and with the retail zoning, in order to “avoid competition with a business that’s already good and strong.”

The Bayside group plans to meet with Bill Trogdon, member of the Eastsound Design Review Committee (EDRC), whose experience with the Bayside project  includes designing Vern’s Bayside Restaurant, and instructing architect Gordon Walker in architecture in the 1960s. They have already met with Eastsound Water Users Association and Eastsound Sewer and Water District. They have yet to meet with the County Department of Development and Planning (CD&P).