“The tennis club wants to put on weight and make some waves.In what would be a major expansion, the Bainbridge Island Racquet Club on Koura Road wants to add a fitness center and two swimming pools to its tennis and racquetball courts.Our approach to tennis has been to be family friendly and welcoming, said club owner Ted Eisenhardt. We want to take that same approach and integrate fitness and swimming.The aquatic complex Eisenhardt envisions would have a 25-yard-long lap pool with perhaps four lanes, and an irregularly shaped fitness pool for water aerobics. “
“Crews began clearing a Sands Avenue parcel this week, to make way for the island’s next ball field complex.But progress for local youth sports programs comes at a cost for the neighbors, among them Sands Avenue resident Frank Forencich.I’ve been losing business all week, said Forencich, who operates a massage and personal training business on his property within view of the site. Nobody wants a massage when the chainsaws are going.Forencich said he and others have expressed concerns over the ball field plan, and were surprised by the sudden appearance of equipment this week. Signs went up on several nearby trees, protesting the irony of the clearing a week before Earth Day. “
“To the Bainbridge Island Harbor Commission, an anchorage plan would legitimize and preserve the liveaboard community in Eagle Harbor.The reason we are here tonight is because you have made your case, harbor commissioner Betsy Peabody told a half-dozen harbor liveaboards and their allies at Tuesday’s commission meeting.We want to preserve that use, but to do so, we need a level of management.But to the audience, any form of regulation looked like a potential infringement on their ability to live as they please.Why can’t we rely on personal responsibility? asked audience member Jim Randall, who is restoring a boat on which he plans to live. “
“The 21 freeholders drafting a new charter for Kitsap County government have finished the preliminaries and are getting down to business, the island’s two elected representatives on that group say.We’ve been through the procedural process – which took a little longer and was a little rockier than I thought – and now we’re in the midst of two months of education, said Andy Maron, former Bainbridge Island mayor and city council member.The freeholders will begin taking votes on various issues at a meeting beginning at 8:30 a.m. today at the Givens Center in Port Orchard. “
“Preservation of open space tests positively in a Bainbridge Island public-opinion survey.So positively, in fact, that Mayor Dwight Sutton is considering upping the ante on a bond issue to acquire open land from $5 million to $7 million, or even higher.The poll, showed that 58 percent of the people would support a $10 million bond issue, Sutton said. For a $7 million issue, support was 63 percent, and it was even higher for a $5 million issue.The telephone survey of 350 houses, – commissioned by the city March 14 at a cost of $15,000 – was conducted April 6-8 by a polling organization working for the Trust for Public Lands. Results were announced at a Sunday meeting of island groups involved in land preservation. “
“Bainbridge teachers and their peers statewide have decided not to strike – for now.While teachers don’t feel this is the time to strike, the result of the survey indicated a strong interest in local (action), said Rick Wood of the Washington Education Association, after polling of WEA members last week.Teachers are protesting the governor’s proposed budget, which will not fully fund proposition I-732, passed by Washington state voters last November to give school employees a cost-of-living raise. “
“The slowdown in the Seattle dot.com world is showing up on Bainbridge Island in the form of office vacancies.And with more space in the pipeline, commercial real estate broker Jerry Knipe says that the days of 10 to 15 percent annual rent increases are gone for now.The slowdown in the market is more dramatic than any thing I have seen in the seven years I have been here, he said.Knipe, a principal in the Sunrse Group real estate brokerage firm, estimates that there are now between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet of vacant commercial space on Bainbridge Island, about 10 percent of the total. For the last few years, he said, the vacancy rate has hovered at about 2 percent.It’s a simple matter of economics, Knipe said. “
“A beautifully renovated downtown theater, on a street barren of passersby; the finest ferry terminal/transit hub on Puget Sound, surrounded by run-down housing, perpetually vacant commercial space and sprawling parking lots with water views.Only in Bremerton.Will it be ever thus? Perhaps not, we are told, if county commissioners give the OK to a new government center in the downtown core of Kitsap’s largest city. “
“Todd Stabelfeldt is like any 22-year-old. He goes to the movies and to Jazz Alley with friends. He wears his baseball cap backwards. He surfs the ‘Net sometimes, but gets impatient with how long it takes to download information. What distinguishes Stabelfeldt is that he has been a quadriplegic since age 8, when his 12-year-old cousin accidentally shot him with an antique rifle.Today, Stabelfeldt has a full-time job with an island anatomic pathology firm, Cortex Medical Management Systems, that provides database software. He accomplishes many things for himself, like using phone and computer, by blowing puffs of air into specially-designed equipment.For others activities, though, he gets a hand from the Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers of Bainbridge Island, who send a volunteer twice a week to do lunch with Stabelfeldt at his office. “
“Prosecutors will try for a third time to prosecute Ralph Leonard of Bainbridge Island for allegedly shooting at a police officer in 1998, now that a psychiatrist at Western State Hospital has found Leonard competent to stand trial. But the attorney for the former Eagle Harbor liveaboard wonders whether the competency finding – which is subject to challenge – was driven by the need to reduce the population at an earthquake-damaged state hospital building in Tacoma.I don’t think the timing is entirely coincidental, said Tim Kelly of Port Orchard, Leonard’s appointed public defender. “
“Mary Jane Rehm invited 15 artists to come with her through the looking glass, as curator of Mirror Mirror on the Wall, the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts exhibit opening April 7.Former owner of Artworks Gallery in Pioneer Square and display designer for BAC, Rehm wanted to do a group show based on a functional object – a format she had employed in the past with shows featuring teacups and other items.What often happens, Rehm said, is that when you invite artists to step out of their usual medium, they take the opportunity to do something truly different from their own imagery. Rehm chose mirror for the wealth of metaphorical and visual possibilities attached to the subject matter. “
“Irked by what they say are discriminatory practices by the Boy Scouts of America, some parents are asking the school and park districts to re-evaluate their relationships with that organization.At immediate issue is whether the school district should continue to give reduced rates for use of building space and other privileges to the scouting organization.The issue, to us, is respecting all students, said parent Jing Fong. We want the district to carry out beliefs and convictions they have stated consistently. “
“Just when we thought his case couldn’t get any weirder or more Kafka-esque, Ralph Leonard now finds himself in the county jail and the state mental hospital – at the same time.On March 13, the state Department of Social and Health Services notified Bainbridge Police by letter that Leonard had been given yet another six-month term at Western State Hospital, where he’d resided since being found incompentent to stand trial for allegedly firing a shotgun at a local officer. Turns out that on March 12, Leonard was moved to the Kitsap County Jail, having been deemed competent to participate in his own defense. And there he sits. “
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