Developer plans 45 new homes in Gig Harbor area near state Route 16
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- Developers filed a preliminary plat to subdivide 25.5 acres into 45 home lots near SR 16.
- A previous version of the development had been dropped in 2019.
- Gig Harbor staff are reviewing the preliminary plat for completeness and code consistency.
Seven years after property owners dropped their plans to build a new housing community near state Route 16, they’re trying again.
In March, civil engineers from CES NW, Inc. and representatives from Garrette Homes met with Gig Harbor city staff for a pre-application meeting regarding Harbor Winds, their proposed development near 5026 93rd St. The team proposed subdividing roughly 25.5 acres into 45 single-family home lots, according to records in the city’s permit portal, and submitted a preliminary plat application July 7. A preliminary plat precedes a final plat, which is required for construction.
Gig Harbor Homesites LLC owns four of the seven parcels, according to Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer records. Laurence Finn, a private individual, owns the remaining three parcels, and the family is in the process of selling them to Garrette Homes, a spokesperson for his family said in a phone call Thursday. The parcels are in escrow and the family anticipates the sale closing by December.
The News Tribune reached out to a representative of Gig Harbor Homesites to ask about their plans for the property and was referred to Kevin Hanchett, managing member for Resource Transition Consultants. As a court-appointed receiver for Gig Harbor Homesites, RTC is authorized to manage and sell the property on the owner’s behalf.
In a phone call Thursday, Hanchett said that Resource Transition Consultants is selling the land on Gig Harbor Homesites’ behalf to GCH Puget Sound, Inc., the parent company for Garrette Homes. The sale will likely close in the first quarter of 2027, he said.
Gig Harbor Property Investment, LLC first brought Harbor Winds to the table in 2009, The News Tribune reported. (Hanchett confirmed that the property investment group is the same group as Gig Harbor Homesites.) This version was bigger — proposing 124 single-family homes on 39.4 acres — but located in the same area. Gig Harbor city officials previously told The News Tribune that the site was difficult to develop because of wetlands, a lack of access to city water and sewer and other factors.
The investment group also ran into difficulties working out access to the site, deciding they could either get permission to use private roads such as 93rd Street or build a frontage road parallel to state Route 16, The News Tribune reported. The group eventually had a full design completed for the frontage road, extending from Rosedale Street Northwest to a business park just off of state Route 16 where drivers could enter the new development. The road would also connect to Haven of Rest, potentially eliminating safety concerns residents have raised about the sharp turn-off from the highway to enter the cemetery.
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The developers labored through the permitting process for about a decade and ultimately dropped the project around 2019.
In the new proposal, the access to the property will be “from Burnham Drive NW, to 96th Street NW, then via private access easements along 49th Avenue Court and 93rd Street,” according to a Feb. 25 letter from CES NW to the city. During the pre-application meeting March 11, Gig Harbor Associate Engineer Chloe Wiser said that the developers would need to show that there’s room for a second access point to the property. That could be a road to the south, connecting from Rosedale Street Northwest, she said.
“You don’t have to build that,” Wiser said at the meeting. “The city or future development will build it. It just has to be proven that a road can go there.”
“Well, there was already a road design that we almost put in 10 years ago when we looked at this for another client, and that was already approved by the state and by, I believe, the city,” Craig Deaver, principal for CES NW, said. “Are you aware of that?”
Wiser said in the meeting that she was not aware of the design but that CES NW could submit it to the city.
Hanchett, managing member for Resource Transition Consultants, confirmed in a phone call Thursday that the developers had obtained the private access easements needed to install a new road near 93rd Street. He was not aware of whether the developers had submitted a frontage road design to the city, but said in his last conversation with Garrette Homes, “they felt that they had addressed all the issues.”
Eric Baker, the city’s community development director, confirmed in an email Wednesday that the city received the Harbor Winds application and “is reviewing for completeness.”
“Once complete, City staff will review the residential proposal and will be assessing (its) consistency with all City codes including vehicle and fire access, critical area protections, density, landscaping, stormwater, utilities, and other requirements,” he wrote, adding that all information will be included in the city’s permit portal.
“As a preliminary plat, it will be required to have a public hearing before the Hearing Examiner at some point in the future.”
The plan to revive Harbor Winds “came about just kind of by chance,” Hanchett told The News Tribune in a phone call Wednesday. Resource Transition Consultants first got involved to help the property owners sell part of their land to the owners of Haven of Rest, the cemetery off of state Route 16. After that sale, Hanchett said, he began looking around the edges of the property to see what could be done with the remaining parcels, and learned that Garrette Homes had purchased three homes nearby. He approached the housing developers and suggested using that location to access the property via a code-compliant road, and got their support, he said.
Now that the preliminary plat application is in, the developers will wait for feedback from city staff and learn the changes they need to make before getting approval for a final plat, Hanchett told The News Tribune. He wasn’t aware of the developers’ construction timeline but said that they won’t be able to start building until they have final plat approval.
