Bremerton Historic Preservation District Proposal

My contribution to a presentation to Mayor Lent
for the project: "Remaking Place: Bremerton Revitalization"
Winter 2012



Remaking Place: Bremerton Revitalization Project

Overview:
This proposal’s aim is to improve the quality of life for residents within the downtown neighborhood by promoting a Historical Bremerton District. This project encourages the preservation of the distinct architectural history of Bremerton’s residential core, encourages civic pride and maintains the availability of decent and affordable single-family residences by extending property tax exemption to owners of these homes in exchange for making basic safety and cosmetic improvements to their properties.

Currently Bremerton has a property tax exemption program available to individuals and corporations for improving or developing new or existing multi-unit residences within the area (Code Publishing: Bremerton Municipal Code 3.78).  By expanding BMC 3.78, the heart of Bremerton’s residential core, dominated by early 20^th century homes would also be rejuvenated, adding greatly to the unification of the downtown businesses and the surrounding residents. Benefits for the community would include: beautification of the downtown residential core, encouraged destination tourism like that of Port Townsend, opportunities for landowners to increase the value of their properties, and meaningful improvements for the safety and well-being of the core’s residents. 


Background:
Currently, the median household income in the district is a third less than the rest of residential Bremerton at just under $27,000 per year, with nearly 37% of the residents within the area living below the poverty level. The area supports a population density level two and a half times that of the rest of Bremerton. The vast majority of residences are rentals, with a majority of blocks in the area showing 80%-100% renter occupied homes (City-Data). Safety concerns such as inadequate entry doors, lack of exterior lighting, and broken or non-existent window and door locks make a secure and restful home an unaffordable luxury for many residents.  Many of these homes are dilapidated: inadequate heating or cooling caused by under insulated walls, attics and windows promote unsanitary and unhealthful living conditions while draining tenant’s already limited resources with high utility bills. Failing roofs patched with tarps, clogged or nonexistent gutters, and missing exterior paint deteriorate value and squelch civic pride.

And yet, these homes are still occupied. Renters still want to participate in the hope of having a home of their own, a yard for their children or pets, a small garden, a piece of the American Dream. Tenants of all income levels deserve these basic necessities: safe, healthy community housing, and the choice between living in a modest single family home or an apartment. Property owners who have modest holdings of single-family units should be afforded the same tax benefits that are already offered to large apartment complex owners under the existing code.  With the city of Bremerton actively promoting this amended tax incentive plan, more middle-income landlords would be encouraged to improve their rental units to a base standard set by the city.

Covered Improvements:
Within this proposal eligible improvements would include: insuring minimum standards of security such as deadbolts, exterior grade doors in entrances, peepholes, working outdoor security lights, and locking windows.  Installing energy efficient windows, upgrading furnaces, water heaters, and installation of grounded electrical outlets would increase energy savings and safety. Upgraded exterior paint and repairs to roofs and gutters would increase the civic pride of the neighborhood and encourage community involvement. In exchange for the tax exemption, owners would be prohibited from raising rental rates of the properties during their participation in the program. This would encourage more landlords to bring the current housing within the proposed Historical District up to the minimum standard.  This must be encouraged if Bremerton wants to implement a successful urban rejuvenation plan.

As part of the program, participating landlords would display an,   “I’m restoring Historic Bremerton”   sign prominently in the yard while improvements are being made. This would bolster community involvement, get neighbors talking, and create a buzz. Additionally, many residents would gladly assist their landlords in tasks such as painting and pruning, knowing that they would enjoy these improvements without having their rents increase. Such partnerships within the program would boost renters’ motivation to maintain their yards and neighborhoods. Utilizing the untapped resources of citizen involvement and civic pride would be a great side benefit to help promote the Historic District Restoration Plan.

Current Examples:
Other communities have proven the positive social and economic impact a restoration project can have on a neighborhood. Pasadena’s Bungalow Heaven project is one example. This project, in preserving the distinct architecture of the neighborhood not only brought the community together, improved living conditions for residents and increased property values, but it also created a bond among the residents that was instrumental in creating a safer, neighborly community. Bob Kneisel, an early proponent of Pasadena’s project writes about organizing the Bungalow Heaven historic district program: “This victory gave us a new sense of power and of community. We started to see our neighborhood not just as rows of houses, but as our own turf, a place we all liked, we all shared in, and were now working to preserve.” The project also revealed to residents the necessity for proactive community involvement to solve local issues.  Kneisel continues: “In canvassing the neighborhood and talking about the need to preserve it by becoming a Landmark District, we discovered that a host of other issues concerned our neighbors. Some were alarmed at rising crime. Others didn’t like all the traffic. The park was a mess. Abandoned vehicles (and houses) were problems.” While creating the historic district, Bungalow Heaven also began a successful Neighborhood Watch which lowered the incidence of crime and nuisance properties, and increased community pro-activism. As an added bonus, Bungalow Heaven was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 2008, and has been featured by national and international media. This community recognized the unique character of its historic housing, and found a way to use that to improve conditions while gaining international recognition.

 By fostering a similar program, Bremerton could also benefit as a community through increased tourism. Just as the City’s new Fountain Parks showcase our nautical heritage and the vital role the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has played in shaping Bremerton’s history, the historic neighborhoods that housed so many War-Era shipbuilders can be showcased as part of our regional heritage. By extending this theme into the proposed Historic District, Bremerton can connect Evergreen Park to the Fountain Parks with a Historic District pedestrian corridor. This would bring increased foot traffic and potential commerce to Pacific Avenue businesses, and extend Bremerton’s Revitalization along major corridors.

Renovation is cost effective. In a related story, Habitat for Humanity recently completed a renovation of an older home in Bremerton. The Kitsap Sun reported that the project, completed in early February 2012, took half the time and half the money of their usual new construction projects (Phan). Habitat could prove to be a valuable partnership for the Historic Preservation Project. Other community resources could be utilized to support this plan, such as local shelter and community action groups, youth organizations, and vocational training programs or student service groups from Olympic College and area high schools. These could be inexpensive labor alternatives for home owners who would like to take part in the Preservation Program, but lack initial capital for improvements.

The Historic District Space:
A community district is defined by its characteristics: architectural styles, resident involvement, and civic pride; but it is not just the buildings that shape a place. A neighborhood’s open spaces play a vital role as well.  Vacant lots with overgrown brush, construction waste and litter encourage crime; they become havens for rodents and leave residents feeling unsafe in their own neighborhood.  For these reasons, property owners of vacant land would also be eligible for the incentive program by cleaning up and offering their lot as a Historic District Community Vegetable Garden, available for use by residents within the zone. By cleaning up construction debris, refuse and invasive plants, tilling the lot, seeding a cover crop of low-cost, hardy annual sunflowers and prominently displaying a, “This lot available for adoption as a Historic Bremerton Community Garden”  sign, the owner would also be eligible for the benefit afforded currently in BMC Chapter 3.78. Once a garden was adopted, it would be replanted and maintained by neighborhood gardeners who pledged to maintain the personal use garden to a minimum standard.

Conclusion:
As Bremerton works toward enhancing its downtown core, improving its park to park corridors and bringing commerce and enthusiastic residents to its center, its historic residential district adds an opportunity to strengthen its residential core. By encouraging the city’s property owners to invest in the community, Bremerton would invest in the residents who could become the downtown’s greatest allies and supporters. Residents who have something to take pride in are active participants with a stake in seeing Downtown Bremerton’s Sub Area Plan succeed. A community who takes pride in itself and its surroundings is a healthy prosperous community, and a commerce friendly environment in downtown’s business district will become successful if the residential areas surrounding the core are also welcoming, positive functioning neighborhoods.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________


A comparison of data from the proposed historic district and the rest of Bremerton
Bremerton’s Historic Downtown Neighborhood defined as
Chester Avenue to Washington Avenue, Burwell Street to 11^th Street (City-Data: 2009)


  percentage of households living under the poverty level:

from 32% (shown in buff)  to 44% (shown in yellow)

   percentage of owner occupied vs. renter occupied homes:

from 8% renter occupied (shown in purple) to 100% renter occupied (shown in yellow)

Area: 0.492 square miles

Population: 2,039

Population density:

Downtown:     4,148 people per square mile
Bremerton:   1,644 people per square mile

Median income per household:
Downtown:    $26,791
Bremerton:    $40,228

Percentage of residents below poverty level:
Downtown:    36.9%
Bremerton:      19.4%

                                                                                                              

___________________________________________________________________________________________

A candidate for the Historic District Preservation Project :

This home and vacant lot are located on Pacific Avenue, south of 12^th street along the proposed Pacific Avenue Park to Park Corridor.

This is one of several potential Historic District Restoration project house and lot sites on this block. (Photo- Anna Fern)

                           

Possible improvements include:  insulated windows, exterior grade entry door, deadbolt, front steps, awning, handrail, security light,
gutters, replacement roofing, exterior paint, foundation plantings. To the right is a future Historic Bremerton Community Garden;
as it waits for adoption, low-maintenance, cheery sunflowers greet passers-by.
City of Bremerton Historic Bremerton Preservation Project signs inform the community and spur involvement. (Illustration- Anna Fern)

_________________________________________________________________________________



 Proposed Downtown Historic District Preservation zones
  map adapted from the City of Bremerton Downtown Regional Center Sub Area Plan  
Northern orientation; no given scale. 2007
http://www.ci.bremerton.wa.us/forms/communitydev/subarea/DowntownSAP_Board.pdf           

1) Highland Neighborhood - orange field on right- larger homes, boarding houses   early 20^th century. Would be an attractive showcase neighborhood of large, historic homes.
                        
2) Pacific Avenue Park to Park Corridor -pink field- bounded by Cogean and Pleasant Avenues. Proposed focus of Historic District Project. Mixed residential and business- several smaller homes. Higher percentage of owner-occupied properties fronting Pacific Avenue.
         
3) Proposed Phase 1 Focus Area - yellow field-of Historic District Project. Single family units, Bounded by Park and Cogean Avenues. Prime area for incentive program. Area dominated by small Craftsman and War Era bungalow rental homes built between 1900 and 1930.
          
4) Sustainability Neighborhood -orange field on left- Bounded by Warren and Park Avenues. High rental resident concentration area. Proposed focus of Historical District Project. Several small homes, older apartments. High concentration of vacant lots, potential community gardens.
                        
5) 6^th and Burwell Streets Corridors - blue field-major thoroughfares with high potential tourist impact- connects SR3, HWY 303, HWY 304, and Washington State Ferry.

                               _____________________________________________________

Citations


Code Publishing: Bremerton Municipal Code 3.78, Multi-Family Property Tax Exem
ption information. <http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/Bremerton/html/Bremerton03/Bremerton0378.html#3.78>


Bungalow Heaven - Pasadena, California <http://www.bungalowheaven.org>

City-Data - Statistics and graphs for resident income, ownership and occupancy within the 98337 zip code.
<http://www.city-data.com/zips/98337.html>
<http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Downtown-Bremerton-WA.html>

Downtown Regional Center Sub Area Plan zoning map
Downtown Sub Area Plan Overview, City of Bremerton.
<http://www.ci.bremerton.wa.us/display.php?id=972>


Kneisel, Bob. Bungalow Heaven Origins: The Way it Was.
< http://www.bungalowheaven.org/overview/bungalow-heaven-origins>

Phan, Amy published by the Kitsap Sun, February 11, 2012.
“Habitat for Humanity celebrates first home renovation”
<http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/feb/11/habitat-for-humanity-celebrates-first-home/>
                                 

"Out of the Flames" : Book Review

A writing project for History 117, Western Civilization II, Winter 2012.

                                     Out of the Flames: Too Entertaining to Be Educational
                           
Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. First published © 2002 by Broadway Books of Random House, Incorporated. 368 pages, with bibliographical references.  EBook formatted edition, with Jackie Aher and Donna Sinisgalli, version 3.0, published © 2008 by Crown Publishing Group, ISBN-13: 9780307489241: available through Barnes and Noble booksellers.

          Historian Lawrence Goldstone holds a PhD in American Constitutional Studies, and is a prolific writer of novels and non-fiction works, articles and papers pertaining to history, politics and rare books.  Nancy Gladstone studied History at Cornell before earning a Master’s degree at the Columbia University School of International Affairs, and worked by chance as an international options trader for a Wall Street bank before writing her first book.
          The two have co-authored several books in connection with their passion for collecting rare and out-of-print books, with Out of the Flames being their fourth collaboration.  They cover a lot of ground in this tale: from political and religious goings-on in France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland a hundred years before the time of the Reformation and the rise of Jean Calvin,  all the way to the development of western medicine at Johns Hopkins University. They produce convincing explanations of the political motivations of monarchs and religious agents, as well as marvelous points of minutia. If you’ve ever wondered what the connection is between the Unitarian Church and the telegraph, or why the heir to the French crown is called the Dauphin you will find the answers in this book. The authors continually delight and entertain the reader by aligning coordinates across centuries and cultures; the reader is engaged by their way of sharing potentially dry material in a matter of fact and engaging manner. Their love of old books and history appear to be the driving force behind the telling of this story, and this enthusiasm is delightfully infectious.
          It makes sense, then, that Out of the Flames is more a history about a book, Christianismi Restitutio (Christianity Restored), than a history about people. It begins a hundred years before the book was written, continues on with the life and death of its author Servetus, and continues on for centuries after. All the interwoven elements are there: the creators of the Gütenberg printing press, the philosophers of the early Reformation, and the makers of laws and wars and many unpredicted effects. Servetus’ inflammatory work’s journey continues as it becomes his ultimate downfall, and all known copies are destroyed. It is then rediscovered, protected, lost and discovered again, influencing new Christian movements and internal medicine of the Enlightenment in Germany, Transylvania and the British colonies in the Americas along the way.  
          Christianismi was not Servetus’ first book, but it was his most notorious. The early life of Servetus (née Miguel Serveto, AKA Michel Villeneuve and several variations) was not that remarkable for the son of a minor Spanish noble, but his thirst for knowledge and aptitude for language certainly were. He excelled at his studies, and by the age of 13 he was a master of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. His scholarship led him to read the original scriptures as well as the Vulgate version of the Bible, and he kept track of the discrepancies he found. By age seventeen he had added Arabic to his repertoire so that he could study the Koran as well. As a teenager, he was tutored by Juan de Quintana, an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus who was a contemporary of the Protestant reformers Luther and Zwingli. For a time he was the houseguest of Oecolampadius, another biblical scholar, until he made himself unwelcome by hounding his host with incessant religious debate.
          The story follows the young man through many exploits: several heretical writings and translations of texts, an unofficial stint at medical school both as a star pupil and educator, a job as the personal physician to an archbishop and a governor; life on the run under several aliases, mostly due to ruffled feathers among other doctors, educators and religious theorists, and still more heretical writing, all before the age of 30. Ultimately, his unfortunate combination of rare intellect and social naïveté proved to be his downfall.
          Today Servetus would probably be diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Asperger’s Syndrome, and medicated into mediocrity. He was passionately focused on scripture and history, but it appears his passion was more academic than emotional. When he pointed out the errors, disinformation and outright falsehoods he found while translating texts, he seemed genuinely surprised that he was condemned rather that lauded for his discoveries. For all of his brilliance, he was a bit simple when it came to understanding the workings of the human heart and mind as well as the scheming of man, especially a man as ambitious as Jean Calvin. Like the fellow who must repeat the punch-line of a joke until it loses all its humor, or the party-goer who has one drink too many, Servetus continually pushed the limits of patience and tolerance. His greatest crime, aside from his lack of social graces or continually confounding his supporters and adversaries, was the notion that he could somehow “win” by convincing others to see things his way while acknowledging their lesser intellect.  He believed that if he could point out their mistakes clearly enough, eventually he would convince them to happily admit that they were ignorant of the truth and thank him for the clarification.
          It’s no surprise, knowing Servetus’ “right-makes-might” style, that he made it a personal mission to convince Calvin that his doctrine was flawed. He initiated a correspondence with the man, and continually hounded him with letters meant to embarrass and harass him into accepting Servetus’ position. He even sent Calvin a copy of his own book with corrections and arguments scribbled in every margin. In the end, Servetus’ underestimation of the power of the very personal hatred Calvin developed for him proved a fatal mistake.
          Fortunately, Calvin also underestimated the difficulty of suppressing mass media and this proved vital for the survival of Servetus’ work. Calvin’s obsessive attempts to obliterate Servetus’ heretic writings failed, and three known copies survived. The writings in Christianismi Restitutio not only helped to shape what would become the Unitarian Church, and introduced the biggest leaps in understanding the cardiopulmonary system since the writings of Galen in the 2^nd century CE.
          Out of the Flames includes a short annotated bibliography as well as an extensive citations list. When I reached the end of the story, I continued to read the epilogue and bibliography because I didn´t want the story to end. The Goldstone’s are great storytellers, and would probably make interesting dinner guests. Anyone interested in European history of the Reformation, western medicine - from medieval methods and field surgery in the American Civil War to the creation of the modern medical university - or the influence of religion on the design of the United States government, and just plain old anyone who loves trivia or a well-told tale would enjoy this book.

                                                             
                                                                Works Referenced

Goldstone, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a
          Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World. 2008, Crown
          Publishing Group, eBook edition, v. 3.0.

High Middle Ages, the Official Nancy Goldstone website. Biography webpage. Unknown date.  
         < http://nancygoldstone.com/bio.html>

Smiley, Tavis - PBS interview with Lawrence Goldstone on Lawrence’s book Inherently Unequal.
          Video and transcript. February 8, 2011. 
          <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/historian-lawrence-goldstone/>