Last month, I predicted that since Easter was happening a little late in the season there was less likelihood of egg hunts getting rained on. Perhaps I should leave the meteorology business to the professionals. At my nephew’s house in Belfair the kids got a pretty good soaking while they were in search of a couple hundred of the prized objects. In spite of the weather, I hope that you all had a wonderful Easter holiday.

On April 12, the Port of Kingston Commission and Staff held an open house at the yacht club to show interested citizens how our master planning process is progressing. During the two-hour event, some 40 people showed up and took part in one or all of four different discussion groups.

Since December, we have been meeting with a core group defining the direction that the port will take in the next 10 years and into the future beyond that. We came up with four broad areas of development that are going to be addressed based on projected local population growth and responses to questionnaires sent to port district residents last winter. The four major areas are: economic development, parks and recreation, marina facility expansion and parking.

The obvious favorite piece of the process has been our plan to offer a kayak facility in the marina. This is a project that is seriously underway now. The concept has been so well accepted that we are proceeding with further design and engineering studies.

The remainder of the plan is shaking out to focus on creating more parking, trying to fit more pleasure craft into the marina and beginning to develop an economic incubator for the downtown area of Kingston. It may seem right now that these improvements are not necessary but keep in mind that this plan needs to anticipate things up to 10 years into the future. With construction well underway in the White Horse development and Arborwood within a year or so of starting, plus many other smaller housing projects being built or about to start, we feel now is the time to plan on how to handle the increased population coming to our little village.

As we bring tenant/partners into the port property, we are seriously looking for types of business that will complement what is already in the downtown area and help make the entire neighborhood a more viable community.

In the economic development group, we discussed the need in the near future for another restaurant choice, a chandlery and some sort of small convenience store to serve visiting boaters. I have also long supported a local facility such as a conference center where groups as large as 200 could gather for meetings, family reunions or wedding receptions.

BC & J Architects of Bainbridge Island has provided us with many of the renderings you may have seen around town. They are studying our parking situation now and are looking for way to create multilevel and underground alternatives to maximize the parking capacity and provide a sensible traffic flow solution while retaining or expanding the park and open space. It looks like the walk-on ferry may be coming back within a year, and when that happens we will need more parking.

On the marina side of the operation, there is pressure to expand the capacity of the boat haven. A quick survey of Poulsbo, Brownsville and our own port showed that there are about 1,000 people on waiting lists to have a boat tied up in a North Kitsap harbor. We have been looking at a couple of ways to expand the capacity of the existing marina by adjusting some of the pier locations and configuration. There are also a few conceptual drawings of a larger mooring facility outside the existing breakwater.

On the recreation front, we are going to take quick steps to re-open the North Beach access trail. This is an extremely popular recreation venue and the early February storms rendered the trail unsafe. We are going to do some temporary repairs in May so that the trail can be opened for this summer. Then we will take a look at how we are going to repair, rebuild or reinforce the trail to keep it from falling apart in the future.

Once our plan is nearing completion, we will be preparing a master shoreline permit application that will incorporate all of the projects into one document to be filed with the county’s Department of Community Development. That will be the start of the permitting process. At the same time, we will be developing our funding approach, seeking whatever grants are available and preparing to issue development bonds. And, we are still trying to get the state ferries to sign a lease on the ferry landing property.

I could go on and on but I am running out of space for this month so keep watching and we will try to keep you informed.

Speaking of being informed, our good friend Tiffany Royal is leaving the Kitsap Newspaper Group to pursue another career. For the last several years, Tiffany has kept us all well-informed on hundreds of situations and events here in our little corner of the peninsula. I will miss her and her articles. Good luck, Tiffany.

That’s about it for this time. As always thanks for reading this stuff and I hope to see you down at the port for the farmers’ market.

Contact Pete DeBoer, Port of Kingston Commissioner, at pete@petedeboer.com.