BREMERTON – Regime change at city hall brought the “Move to Bremerton” marketing campaign to an abrupt halt.
Mayor Greg Wheeler says he was no fan of the campaign initiated by his predecessor, former Mayor Patty Lent, that targeted families on the other side of Puget Sound with a series of videos that cost $5,000 to produce.
When the videos launched, there were indicators that a tide of new residents was already coming: rising rents, surging property values and soaring building permit applications. Wheeler believes that targeting wealthier Seattle residents was unnecessary and put greater pressure on a housing market that was already displacing some residents.
“It was like running to get ahead of the parade,” he said.
But Lent defends the videos she funded. When the “Move to Bremerton” campaign began in January 2016, she said the city wasn’t yet experiencing a housing crisis. The vote to approve Kitsap Transit’s 28-minute ferry crossing to Seattle wouldn’t come until that November. She says the city needed to attract both residents for planned apartment developments and families seeking to fix up aging homes.
“When I started that, Bremerton needed the bodies,” she said. “We had improved the parks and fixed up many streets. We needed people to use them.”
Media attention
It's unclear whether the city's marketing efforts spurred the media pieces on Bremerton that followed. Much of the attention focused on the new fast ferry — of which Lent was a champion. And a white-hot Seattle housing market led King County residents to search for relief from sky-high rents and home prices.
In stories published in 2016 and 2017, news outlets introduced Seattleites to a city once “known less for its beautiful water views and more for its bar fights and prostitution” (according to NPR affiliate KUOW), and a “quaint maritime town” on the verge of change (Seattle Magazine). Stories focused on the cheapness of Bremerton real estate (get a waterfront home in Kitsap for the median cost of a house in Seattle!), the potential for speedier ferry service to entice residents across Puget Sound (no more snarled highway traffic!) and asked whether Bremerton was destined for gentrification.
Seattle Magazine correspondent Steve Scher, who wandered through Bremerton late last year, wondered if “working-class wage earners from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard” were bound to be priced out of the city.
If anything, those Puget Sound Naval Shipyard jobs have increased the pressure on Bremerton's housing market, as employment there has pierced 14,000 — the highest number of workers employed at the shipyard since the Korean War. But Lent argues that Bremerton benefited from a new class of homeowners drawn by the marketing campaign. That's helped to expand the city tax base and led to home improvements.
“I love driving through the city and seeing the new doors new roofs and the yards fixed up,” she said. “We’re seeing rejuvenation.”
They're coming, but are we growing?
People may be moving here, but whether the population is actually increasing as a result of the marketing and media spotlight is hard to tell.
According to the Office of Financial Management, which generates official population estimates for the state, Bremerton added about 2,900 residents from 2010 to 2017, for an average growth rate of 1 percent per year. Seattle grew by an average of 2.4 percent over the same period. Bremerton's growth hasn't been steady, however, as Navy deployments cause the city's population to rise or fall from year to year.
U.S. Census Bureau reports do suggest more people are migrating from King County to Kitsap County. The bureau estimated Kitsap County lost 224 more residents than it gained from King County in a five-year period from 2006 to 2010. That trend reversed between 2011 and 2015, when the bureau estimated Kitsap County gained 240 more residents from King County than it lost, as a growing number of people moved west to the peninsula and fewer people moved east to the metropolis.
While migration from King County to Kitsap County was on the rise by 2015, Kitsap ranked seventh among counties King residents moved to most, and fifth among Washington counties, according to the census. More recent data are not yet available.
No need to advertise anymore
The idea for “Move to Bremerton” came from council President Eric Younger, who recalled the song by Bremerton-born punk rock band MxPx. Younger saw it as a way to bring more permanent residents to a city known for a transient population. The city’s rate of owner-occupied housing has historically trended around 40 percent, and data from the city auditor found renters generate “substantially more calls” for fire, police and code enforcement.
“I was happy to have the mayor run with it,” Younger said. “At the time we were looking for growth.”
He acknowledges things have changed dramatically: "I don’t think we need to advertise anymore.”
The initial videos, created by local producer Mike Barnet, featured local businesses and developers. Lent boasted in them that Bremerton possessed housing that was “twice the size” of Seattle’s “pod apartments” at “half the price.” Bremerton’s World War II-era housing stock, she added, made “great fixer-uppers” for families starting out. And who could beat an hour on a ferry when compared with a commute stuck in traffic?
“We invite you all to come live in Bremerton,” she concluded.
Lent also contracted with CGI Communications to create and promote more videos, in exchange for the advertising dollars that can be earned through them. While Wheeler took down all of the “Move to Bremerton” videos from the city’s website, the CGI contract won’t officially end until February 2019.
The videos generated about 8,000 views online, with nearly 5,000 of those on Lent's initial video, according to statistics compiled by Bremerton Kitsap Access Television. The city's former "Move to Bremerton" web page garnered almost 2,700 views, according to city officials.
With the campaign halted, Wheeler said he’d like to focus on marketing the city in other ways. He'd like to lure a company to take over the Harrison Medical Center property off Cherry Avenue in East Bremerton. The hospital will close when a new one in Silverdale finishes construction.
“I want us to be Bremerton,” Wheeler said. “Not a borough of Seattle.
Top counties King County residents move to:
1. Snohomish County, Washington
2. Pierce County, Washington
3. Los Angeles County, California
4. Whatcom County, Washington
5. Spokane County, Washington
6. Maricopa County, Arizona
7. Kitsap County, Washington
8. Multnomah County, Oregon
9. Thurston County, Washington
10. Whitman County, Washington
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, five-year estimate for 2011-2015.
