Where will the boats go? Gig Harbor kids’ sailing program fears losing its home base
Seals popped their heads above the water as a fleet of small sailboats from West Shore Marina floated along under a cloudless blue sky July 26 in Gig Harbor.
“Puff on!” instructor Chance Busey shouted encouragingly to one young sailor as he drove a powerboat alongside the fleet, checking to make sure no one was left behind. In the distance, a crowd on the deck of 7 Seas Brewing watched as the boats sailed by on their way to the Gig Harbor Lighthouse.
Gig Harbor Junior Sailing, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, teaches over 600 kids each summer how to sail in their local waters. Now, program staff and parents are worried they won’t have a home for their boats after the buildings are demolished sometime in 2025.
Tom Lawrence, one of several Junior Instructors at the summer sailing camps, told The News Tribune he loves sailing so much he’s come back four years in a row and now plans to start training for his license to become a staff instructor.
“It’s just kind of you and the boat and the water and that’s it,” Lawrence said.
Once home to a plant nursery called Peninsula Gardens, the property at 5503 Wollochet Dr. and Fillmore Dr. NW now houses a large collection of sailboats and powerboats owned by Gig Harbor Junior Sailing in one of the vacant greenhouses, and several boat trailers outside.
PenMet Parks also uses the facilities for storage, and the nonprofit Food Backpacks 4 Kids is temporarily storing clothing drive items in another part of the building this summer, according to PenMet Parks Executive Director Ally Bujacich.
Currently, most of the boats are in use in the program’s summer sailing camps, but Gig Harbor Junior Sailing Program Director Joan Storkman said the program stores close to 30-40 boats at the former Peninsula Gardens property in the other nine months of the year.
As PenMet Parks develops a master plan to convert the site into a public park, some Gig Harbor residents are wondering whether the arrangement with Gig Harbor Junior Sailing will continue.
How did the agreement start?
The storage arrangement began with a verbal agreement established in 2014, according to PenMet Parks Marketing Coordinator Heather Dyson. Storkman said Gig Harbor Junior Sailing has re-confirmed their permission to use the site with each new PenMet Parks director since then, including Bujacich.
The agreement was never put in writing or formalized in a contract, according to Storkman. Dyson said a contract wasn’t possible given PenMet Parks’ lack of concrete dates to write into the contract for the planned redevelopment of the property.
Storkman and Bujacich both said independently that they value their partnership with the other’s organization and are committed to working together to find a new storage facility for the sailing program. It probably won’t be at the new park, but PenMet Parks is looking into other resources they can share with the sailing program, according to Dyson.
None of the current PenMet Parks staff were working at PenMet at the time of the original agreement, she wrote in an email.
“We really can’t speak to the nature of the agreement but are in early conversations with GHJS to explore partnership with them,” Dyson wrote. “We hope to be able to support them as we move forward, though we have not yet evaluated the feasibility of any alternatives.”
Keeping the current facilities in place isn’t an option. Bujacich said that building evaluations have found several issues and repairing and maintaining the existing structures to get up to code isn’t economically feasible.
PenMet Parks acquired the Peninsula Gardens property in 2011 for $1 million, according to Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer records. Bujacich said the original purpose was to create more park space and recreational amenities for the Artondale area, which is underserved by PenMet Parks. The park district has allowed the Gig Harbor Farmers Market to use the site in the past.
Previously, the property was going to be turned into an indoor recreation center, but that changed when PenMet Parks acquired the former Performance Golf property at 2416 14th Ave. NW and identified that site as best suited for the center, according to a memo in the April 16 Board of Park Commissioners’ meeting agenda. The recreation center is expected to open in 2025, according to the project website.
Now the park district is paying landscape architecture firm AHBL a maximum of $139,190 to develop a master plan for converting the Peninsula Gardens property into a community park, according to the April 16 meeting agenda and minutes.
Improving the Peninsula Gardens site to provide public recreation opportunities is a high priority in their 2023 Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan, according to Bujacich. The Capital Improvement Plan for 2024-2029 included in the PROS plan says that the park district has budgeted about $3.6 million for the first phase of development of the park, the scope of which depends on the master plan. It’s not clear yet if later phases will be necessary or if the entire master plan will be developed in the first one, according to Bujacich.
“PenMet Parks and Gig Harbor Junior Sailing have been communicating about the schedule for demolition and park improvements at Peninsula Gardens,” Bujacich wrote in a statement to The News Tribune. “PenMet Parks and Gig Harbor Junior Sailing have a long history of collaboration to provide services for our community and we look forward to continuing to explore future potential partnership opportunities that would provide increased public benefit.”
‘Grunt work that just has to happen’
Besides the Peninsula Gardens site, the sailing program runs out of two other facilities at West Shore Marina and Wollochet Bay. They can use these spaces for free by an arrangement with the Stan Stearns family and the Tacoma Yacht Club, respectively.
The organization is actively looking for a permanent waterfront location to call their own, but Storkman said they’re hoping they can continue to partner with PenMet Parks for storage space.
“Those engines and the boats have to be worked on all winter long, and it would be too costly to have that kind of a facility on a waterfront,” Storkman said.
A limited number of boats are stored on the docks at West Shore Marina, but the majority are stored at the Peninsula Gardens site during the non-summer months.
The greenhouse is also used for boat maintenance.
Aspen Merrill, age 17, said he has spent something like 100 hours keeping the boats in good condition. A member of the Gig Harbor Junior Sailing Narrows Race Team and camp instructor, he said he’s been involved with the sailing program for about five or six years and was hired about three years ago to help fix up the boats while they’re not being used.
Merrill described the maintenance work as “grunt work that just has to happen,” like fiberglass repair or engine maintenance. Some of these tasks need to be done at certain temperatures and can’t be done outside, he said.
“The fact that we have this space allows us to operate just as a program as a whole,” Merrill said. “So without it, we don’t have anywhere to go.”
Raising concerns at a public meeting
AHBL unveiled three concepts for the park’s design at a public meeting July 25. Titled “Reuse,” “Reimagine,” and “Restore,” the concepts weren’t finalized designs for the park but presented different combinations and sizes of proposed amenities that residents expressed interest in at the first public meeting and through an earlier online survey. The survey was open for four weeks and received over 360 responses, according to AHBL’s presentation.
Each concept’s name corresponds to a theme. The “Reuse” concept takes advantage of certain elements of the old Peninsula Gardens nursery and greenhouses, such as by repurposing the building’s overhead trusses for a trellis picnic area. The “Reimagine” design focuses on building a community space with the most sports courts and picnic shelters out of the three concepts and the biggest dog park. The “Restore” concept focuses on preserving nature and includes a native meadow and an orchard.
A second survey is available for residents to give feedback online on the three concepts. It’s open until Aug. 23, according to Bujacich.
A graph in the presentation listed the top five desired amenities gathered from the first public meeting as pickleball, playgrounds, volleyball, biking/hiking trails and picnic shelters. The top five desired amenities from the online survey were restrooms, nature trails, pickleball, playgrounds and picnic shelters.
Meeting attendees could look closely at display boards, place stickers on amenities or designs they liked and leave additional written feedback on sticky notes.
Storage for the sailing program did not appear among the proposed amenities, leading Storkman and several parents with kids in the sailing program to speak up.
“We have given input, and nowhere on the chart is kids’ sailing, (nearly) 700 kids involved in this program, and we just ask that somewhere in the plan that that be addressed,” Storkman said at the meeting. “We’ve been very fortunate to have a partnership in the past with PenMet Parks and we’d like that to continue.”
Some of the other residents at the meeting had their own ideas for what the park should include.
Janet Wong was one of several pickleball players who came to the meeting. She told The News Tribune she was disappointed because she didn’t see any plans for covered pickleball courts, which she sees as much safer than those under the open sky because the rain can make the surfaces slick and lead to falls, especially among older people. She wondered if a large indoor facility with space for both pickleball courts and sailboat storage could be possible.
Barbara Henderson, a mosaic artist who teaches art through PenMet Parks and the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network, said at the meeting that she wanted to see a creative makerspace in the plans.
What’s next?
The third and final public meeting about the plan for the Peninsula Gardens property will be at 6 p.m. on Sept. 19 at the PenMet Parks Administrative Headquarters, located at 2416 14th Ave. NW. AHBL will also have information and representatives to talk with residents about the master plan at two summer movie nights at Sehmel Homestead Park.
The first movie night on Aug. 2 will show “The Incredibles” at 5 p.m. and “National Treasure” at 7 p.m. The second on Aug. 16 will show “Shrek” at 5 p.m.
According to the project website, the master plan process will run from June to December, followed by design and permitting from 2025-2026 and construction from 2026-2027. AHBL will present the refined master plan to the Park Board of Commissioners in the fall based on feedback from residents and will seek final approval from the board on Nov. 5, according to AHBL’s presentation at the July 25 meeting.
The project website doesn’t say when the park is expected to open. Asked about that, Bujacich did not provide a date, but said that PenMet Parks plans to implement the master plan in the next few years.
