Sam Fletcher reports from the Oak Harbor City Council meeting of Tue., Jan. 21, 2025 for the Whidbey News-Times.
Oak Harbor has set funds aside to reinvigorate a 600-acre downtown area by bringing retail closer to the waterfront, creating design standards and more.
Similar ideas for the Pioneer Way area came forward in the 1990s and 2000s, said Steve Schuller, public works director, at a city council meeting last week. The new effort is in part paid for by a $200,000 grant from the Department of Ecology and $100,000 from the Center for Creative Land Recycling.
City renderings show a softened shoreline along Bayshore Drive and five-story buildings with storefronts.
They Said It
“Nothing fuels my existential dread like infrastructure discussions,” Mayor Pro Tem Tara Hizon said.
“I grew up here,” she said. “I think of Oak Harbor as a small town. We are a quaint, small town. That’s who we are, and we like it that way.”
That said, as the urban center of the county, Oak Harbor is the “big city” of the area.
While most of the commerce on the island must take place within Oak Harbor city limits, she strives to strike a balance between that inevitability and the desired small-town feel.
“My heart literally swelled when I saw the first (rendering),” she said.
Councilmember James Marrow suggested a solution [to a lack of parking in the new renderings] could be a shuttle to bring people in from a satellite parking lot.
