Most can agree that the business climate on the island, within the greater U.S. economy, is grim. Growth is stagnant, and jobs are slim.

Just how that will ever change, however, is up for debate.

City Council candidates have preached goals of stimulating new business on the island, current city staff say the city needs new revenue streams and the current City Council is preparing to pass an updated land use code. Yet island business folks are faced with their own sets of needs.

“We are right on the cusp of not having enough space for business expansion again,” said Sherri Watson, commercial and residential realtor at Johansson-Clark. “I am all for the entrepreneurs because I don’t want every Bainbridge resident on the ferry.  I want people to live and work on Bainbridge, but we haven’t created an environment where it’s possible to do that.”

The council is on-target to adopt the updated land use code on Oct. 12, with a first and second reading on Sept. 14 and 28 respectively. Though the update was initially targeted to clear up inconsistencies, council and staff have since acknowledged that it stretches beyond in several places and represents policy changes. Business in light manufacturing zones is just one area that may have illuminated a greater need for public scrutiny and conversation.

Entrepreneurial spirit

When Watson comes across entrepreneurs with an idea, the first place she steers them is away from the planning department.

“They aren’t going to help you. They won’t even suggest how,” Watson said. “It hurts my heart how many people go up to that desk with an idea and are turned away. The [planning department] is way more about no then how they can help.”

Watson’s family started Watson Furniture, which eventually left the island at a time when it was booming with a 40 percent growth rate. The store needed another 47,000 sq. feet of space to expand. Unable to find space on-island, her parents reluctantly packed-up in 2001, Watson said, and took 100 jobs with them.

Another trend that Watson noticed back in 2001 was that the furniture store was getting fewer and fewer job applications from islanders. One of the primary reasons, she said, was that less people could afford to live and work on Bainbridge.

“It certainly hasn’t become any easier to find a job on the island that pays the wages it costs to live here,” Watson said. “How can we survive as a society if we don’t have diversity, we ship every resident off-island to work and we don’t support the entrepreneurial spirit? It’s no wonder we have so few young 20-somethings with their energy and ideas. They can’t afford it.”

Watson started addressing the current land use code when she came across the proposal to make warehouses a conditional use in the LM zones. Warehousing has always been an allowed use, she said, and a conditional use requires a permit that ranges from $4,000 to $10,000. She said she was shocked to see such a dramatic change slipped in with the rest of the update.

“You can’t change our rules mid-stream without any input,” said Watson. “Tell us what you are doing.”

Kelly Dickson, project manager for the land use update said that listing warehouses as a conditional use was a mistake, and something she plans to bring up at the Aug. 17 meeting to correct.

Watson said it is those kinds of mistakes that makes business people wary of Bainbridge Island.

“If you are always worried the city is going to come through and change your rules and cost you money you aren’t going to start a business in that kind of hostile environment,” said Watson.

Zoning vision

Keith Barnes, who runs Bainbridge Organic Distillers with his son Patrick, said he sees business opportunity in the land use update. One of the discussions in a recent council meeting detailed possible changes to the regulations in the light manufacturing or LM zone, for food establishment businesses.

Currently businesses are limited on what kind of advertising and street signage they can have and they must close before 6 p.m. Businesses can’t open a retail shop unless the products are actually made on the premise.

The original intent was to limit restaurants and businesses that would detract from business downtown or one of the three neighborhood centers: Rolling Bay, Lynwood Center and Island Center, according to Planning Director Kathy Cook. Food establishments within the LM are supposed to provide business to other employees within LM, and not draw from passer-bys or encourage islanders to drive from remote locations.

“To me this seems like old-school thinking that doesn’t resonate with today’s business world,” said Barnes. “Limiting business at a time when the city needs revenue and business doesn’t mesh.”

Barnes said the distillery lives within the restrictions because their first priority is manufacturing the alcohol, with tastings and tours as a supplemental purpose.

He estimates 95 percent of the people who come in for a taste had plans to do so, and found the distillery online or through other mediums. Very few just happen to be walking by the Coppertop Loop business park, and see the distillery tucked inside.

“If the city’s primary focus is to drive business to Winslow Way at the expense of every other business on the island then I would question that whole process,” said Barnes. “If that’s the case I would think they would want to alter the tax code so businesses under restricted hours are at least being fairly taxed. We don’t get a tax subsidy so business can all go to Winslow.”

At the council meeting Mayor Kirsten Hytopoulos said that the island’s comprehensive plan spells out the vision for a strong downtown and neighborhood villages.

“When you start to bleed out you start to sprawl and diffuse and you aren’t creating the vibrant commercial centers,” said Hytopoulos. “These areas are zoned with traffic patterns and primarily Monday through Friday 9-5 business, sort of places.

“Substantially changing the nature raises concerns about how you are guiding development of the island and its uses.”

When the city made its most recent changes to LM in 2005 it expanded the uses of the district to include vocational schools, martial arts, training clinics and various other types of business. Currently, the city is proposing to change the LM title to business industrial, in order to more accurately reflect the types of business within the district, which are not primarily of a manufacturing nature.

In 2005, the council also considered expanding the tight regulations on food business, but opted not to. Cook said in the last year she has received several business applications from folks looking to open a cafe or pizza joint in LM zones, but haven’t gone through with it because of the restrictive code guidelines.

“By not having full-on restaurants we aren’t attracting people away from Winslow and encouraging people to drive to more remote locations,” Cook said.

Places like the distillery can offer tastings because they aren’t meeting the definition of a food establishment. If they wanted to offer food, it would be another story.

“The code update isn’t really changing these types of things much, but more clarifying and adding definitions for uses we don’t currently have,” said Cook. “What happens, however, is we have to address it when someone comes to apply for a use that we don’t have defined.”

Motor vehicle sales lots

The council took major issue with one undefined use, a motor vehicle sales lot, which falls into a hairy gray area that the council and the city have yet to fully hash out.

In the current code the sale of goods is lumped into one retail category, which includes all retail from hats to groceries.

“If someone were to come in right now and want to open a car lot that would fall under retail, and retail is allowed anywhere downtown, which is probably not what the community envisions for downtown,” said Cook.

To solve the problem the planning department wants to define motor vehicle sales and make it a conditional use. Staff decided to table the debate, until it could bring back more information at the Aug. 17 meeting, but it raised many questions among the council such as whether vehicle sales should be allowed at all on the island, or if out-right restricting vehicle sales would restrict sales of other vehicles like electric scooters or Zipcars, which is a membership-based car sharing company.

“Are we next going to have to define strip clubs because we don’t have a definition,” said Councilor Debbi Lester. ”If you have a definition then you open the doors to allow the business to come in. I hope that we can hold fast to our vision of our community and don’t begin to compromise because we are in a place where we need to consider new revenues.”

Future vision

Although the financial vitality of the city is much improved, city staff have made it clear that new revenue streams are a future necessity.

Whether expanding business ventures is a solution is a community debate that at least one councilor wants to engage.

“I think it’s a balance looking at where we can create opportunity and where we can grow business and create gathering spaces,” said Lester. “In a place like Coppertop where we already have vibrant business I don’t know why we would limit others from starting their own.”

Lester said she would be up for having a workshop or forum on how land use codes impact business.

“Are there things we need to change to make it possible for people to start their own business?” said Lester. “Now is the time for this community to create opportunity for small home-based business or start-ups. That’s how you begin growing business revenue.”

Although she agrees that designated service areas – such as Winslow and the neighborhood service centers – are important, she would like to see more places that are pedestrian and biking friendly that are accessible to the other 50 percent of the island population who don’t live downtown.

Councilor Bill Knobloch also stated that the council has to be mindful that much about the island has changed since the land use codes were originally created. “Times have changed,” said Knobloch. “The island [population] is at 23,000 not 15,000.”