To combat recurring winter floods—and better serve its growing population—Port Orchard elevates its main street and re-envisions a downtown corridor for the future.

By Jennifer Krazit

Most years, come November, when rainy weather coincides with king tides, downtown Port Orchard floods. Bay Street, the waterfront business district’s primary thoroughfare, becomes undrivable, and local business owners rush to sandbag doorsteps and entryways in hopes of keeping water from flooding their shops, restaurants, and cafes. An inadequate stormwater system and the downtown area’s low-lying, waterfront location make flooding in these not-uncommon conditions inevitable. It’s a problem most climate change experts say will only worsen as sea levels continue to rise.

But after years of coping with these recurring floods, Port Orchard is embarking on a grand mission to not only prevent them from happening in the first place, but to build a downtown corridor that will better serve its booming population for decades to come. With the adoption of the Port Orchard Downtown Subarea Plan and an influx of public and private investment, the city is charting a new path forward. The revitalization master plan includes new sidewalks, street trees, an exterior remodel of City Hall, and rebuilding the Port of Bremerton’s breakwater protecting the marina. In addition, the city plans to elevate a portion of Bay Street—the city’s main street through the waterfront of downtown—by 1.5 feet to prevent future flooding.

City leaders have talked about reimagining downtown Port Orchard for years, according to Mayor Rob Putaansuu, who’s lived in the city since 1970. “During my lifetime we’ve had multiple plans for the redevelopment of our downtown, but none were ever executed,” he says. “Now we have a plan, a road map, and the funding to make it happen.”

When he first joined the city council 18 years ago, Putaansuu recalls that Port Orchard was still a largely undiscovered gem, but that has changed. “This past year, whether we want to be or not, we were the sixth fastest-growing city in the state,” he says.

The mayor attributes that growth to several factors, including a post-pandemic shift to remote work that brought an influx of new residents from Seattle and other cities who now telecommute from Port Orchard—a golf community with ample capacity for the development of single-family homes. Kitsap Transit also introduced regular passenger-only ferry service, which means residents can now get to downtown Seattle in just 30 minutes. This rapid growth makes it all the more important to finally implement the kind of updated downtown plan the city has long envisioned, says Putaansuu, who also notes that renovating and rebuilding the city’s downtown only to have it flood year after year would be fruitless. So the city is moving forward with a plan to address that, too.

Port Orchard’s renewed downtown will be anchored by a community center— home to a library on the ground floor and an events and banquet space on the second floor—and a new headquarters for Kitsap Bank. Between the bank and the community center will sit Orchard Street Plaza, creating a permanent home for the town’s farmers market and public events, which currently take place in parking lots, impacting downtown parking during these events. These and other projects are being funded with over $160 million of private and public funds, including federal appropriations, federal and state transportation funds, and municipal and library funds.

“We’re not a large city and for us to be able to gather more than $160 million of funding for our downtown redevelopment is truly remarkable,” says the mayor. “We got public and private entities to believe in what we’re doing.”

When it comes to future-proofing Port Orchard, with its Downtown Subarea Plan, the city is turning that belief into reality.

For more information: portorchardwa.gov