Bainbridge Conversation

Real Foods is closing its cafe on Thursday. Its adjacent specialty grocery store will shut down early next year.

The closures will add another empty store front to the Harbor Square development on Winslow Way. The Harbor Square space formerly occupied by Cafe Trios, which shut down during the summer of 2009, remains empty.

Real Foods’ owners are planning to open a new restaurant and retail business in the Island Gateway development taking shape a block to the west, at the Winslow Way-Highway 305 intersection.

Ten designs for a new nonprofit art museum were unveiled on Monday.

“This museum is going to be an icon on Bainbridge Island,” said John Baker, president of Bainbridge Art Museum’s board, during a gathering of supporters at Bainbridge Performing Arts.

Set to open in the fall of 2011 as part of the Island Gateway development on Winslow Way, the museum will specialize in the works of living Bainbridge and Kitsap County artists.

“It will show art from our time, our place,” Baker said.

For more, read HERE.

A construction manager at the Island Gateway development says concrete powder was deliberately dumped into one of the site’s stormwater drains.

According to police reports, the manager found the drain, which sits about 50 feet north of Winslow Way, clogged with hardened concrete on Tuesday morning. The concrete was caught in a drain “sock” where it hardened into a large block, police said. The drain flows directly into Eagle Harbor.

The manager said no concrete powder was being stored at the work site at the time of the dumping.

The manager told police that the incident could have been “damaging” to his company. Had state environmental regulators seen the concrete, the company likely would have been fined, he said.

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Developer Bill Carruthers reviews a map of the Island Gateway site. Photo: Tristan Baurick

The city is hosting a forum tonight about the Island Gateway development taking shape at the Highway 305-Winslow Way intersection.

Despite a fair amount of opposition to the 60,000-square-foot project, city leaders say the meeting is not aimed at deciding whether or not to halt Gateway’s progress, which now includes a partially-done Kids Discovery Museum and a large pit that will eventually be underground parking.

Rather, the meeting is aimed at informing Gateway’s critics how and why the city let it go forward.

City leaders admit they could have done a better job explaining its processes and getting information out more quickly.

Islanders opposed to the project have made several public information requests, created a website and filed a lawsuit.

Some critics aren’t happy with the goals of tonight’s forum, calling it a “farce” and a “slap in the face.”

For more about the issues surrounding Gateway, check out the story I wrote for Monday’s paper.

Tonight’s forum runs from 7 to 9 p.m. at City Hall.

The city gave final approval for the Island Gatway development late last week.

The largest Bainbridge development in years, Island Gateway is now set to break ground at the Winslow Way-Highway 305 intersection in late summer or early fall.

Planning Director Kathy Cook approved the development on Friday after it earned the support of the city Planning Commission and Design Review Board.

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