Best of the blogs | Tranquil Bay Street

Published 4:33 pm Friday, January 6, 2012

I’m new to downtown. A recent Olympia transplant, I find my home on Dwight Street pretty low-key in comparison to my spot in Olympia.

Less noise. Less traffic.

Less Birkenstock-wearing, patchouli-smelling college students crowding my local coffee shop asking for yesterday’s bagels.

Whoa. I better stop before I get homesick.

Though I like the low-key living I’ve come to associate with my downtown locale, there are certain times when tranquil isn’t appropriate for a city center. And I’m starting to think tranquil is Bay Street’s only speed.

After a couple months worth of nighttime strolls down the main drag, I feel like I’ve already memorized the layout. Bail bonds. For-rent storefront. Antique shop. Moon Dogs, Too! Bail bonds. For-rent storefront. Any sort of nighttime shopping is out of the question. And with all the for-rent signs up, so too is daytime shopping.

At least, it can feel this way.

This week I had the opportunity to talk with John Ready, a South Kitsap man who on December 31st closed his (almost) Bay Street store, the Puget Sound Wine Cellar.

As someone who has been in town a lot longer than me, he was able to shed some light on the issue of a sputtering downtown. He believed — like I do — that change in downtown can’t come solely from City Hall. He said first that absentee ownership needs to become more involved. He also said that building owners needed to lower their rents and get businesses in at any cost. A small-scale tenant paying a low rent is better than a no-renter at no rent, he said.

“Ask Darryl (Baldwin, the owner of Moon Dogs, Too),” he said. “Do you think he likes the lack of competition? No. He’d rather Bay Street was lined with restaurants. Competition is good for everyone.”

Competition is indeed good. And it’s hard to find in a depressed economy. Especially when, like Ready said, absentee owners are asking way too much to rent out their buildings.

Of course, there are signs of good. Way down Bay Street — further than my walk usually carries me — Rob and Kristi McGee are taking a chance and starting Whisky Gulch Coffee and Annapolis Yoga.  A young couple who grew up in town, the McGees hope renovations to an old building can instill some life. To their building, and to Bay Street as a whole.

Life desperately needed. Now I’m not saying my evening walks need to turn into a cruise down Bourbon Street any time soon. I’m not even saying downtown should have a bustling nightlife scene. But I want to see some sort of daytime scene at the very least.

Or else I’ll really start to miss the smell of patchouli.

— Brett Cihon is a reporter and resident Seinfeld look-alike at the Port Orchard Independent