The Oak Harbor community will get a peek at potential redevelopment ideas for a large section of the city during a virtual open house meeting set for Thursday, May 15.

The city is in the midst of a redevelopment planning project for the downtown area as well as the larger “Waterfront District,” which encompasses about 600 acres within a triangle formed by Highway 20, Midway Boulevard and the Oak Harbor waterfront.

The centerpiece of the effort are two properties at the intersection of Pioneer Way and Bayshore Drive, which the city purchased in 2023. Aging structures on the property were recently demolished. The city is using grant funds to clean legacy contamination on the property before working with a developer to “reuse” the parcels.

In fact, the ongoing planning is nearly all grant funded. The city is working with the nonprofit Center for Creative Land Recycling, or CCLR, which gathered public input on the city-owned property and the entire Waterfront District before conducting an economic feasibility analysis. The $100,000 in work is funded by the EPA’s Brownfield Communities program, with a 10% match from the city.

Working with its project partner Cascadia, CCLR conducted two public workshops earlier this year during which residents provided feedback on numerous reuse options. A meeting at 6 p.m. on May 15 will include information about the feedback as well as a chance for questions. People can register for the open house at oakharbor.gov by clicking on the event under “city spotlights.”

The community can also watch on the city’s YouTube and Facebook pages.

A report that will be presented at the meeting “showcases that communities want walkable, vibrant public spaces that prioritize economic development and tourism,” according to CCLR.

The plan, for example, shows that 63% of people want tourism to be the major use of the waterfront with tourists staying overnight. Half of the people in the survey are happy with the waterfront’s existing parks and civic spaces while 45% wanted more of these features.

According to the report, participants at a workshop were shown renderings of large-scale redevelopment projects on the city property and two other sites on the waterfront. One was a five-story, mixed-use building on the city-owned property at the intersection of Pioneer Way and Bayshore Drive. Another showed that project, plus additional development on adjacent land that is privately owned. A third rendering is for development on “Waterfront West,” which encompasses the current, mostly empty asphalt parking lots in the 200 block of Southeast Pioneer Way, a couple blocks east of Highway 20.

In each case, the majority of people said they were either excited about the project or find it acceptable. But at the same time, participants ranked infrastructure capacity, demand on community services and schools, and traffic congestion as the highest level of priority for action.

Public Works Director Steven Schuller emphasized in an email that the drawings are just concepts and that the actual design will differ, based on community input and future agreements with a development partner.

In addition to working with CCLR, the city also obtained a $200,000 grant from the state Department Ecology to work with other consultants. Schuller said in an email that Farallon Consulting is preparing an environmental remedial investigation and feasibility study on the city-owned property. The work included the drilling of five groundwater monitoring wells last year, which the city is sampling each quarter.

In addition, Schuller said the Ecology grant funds work by Dahlin Group for site analysis and site plan concepts for thee areas — the city-owned properties, Waterfront West and “Chimes Corner,” which is in the area around the intersection of Midway Boulevard and Whidbey Avenue.

Schuller said the city plans are to issue “request for proposal” this summer to find a development partner that can construct a mixed-use project on the downtown property.

He outlined three reasons that the redevelopment project is “an exciting step forward” for the community.

“First, we must attract hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly in private investments, to allow our community to replace decades of existing aging infrastructure or continue to experience further protracted and costly decay of our older city center impacting the whole city,” he wrote.

“Second to protect, as much as possible, the surrounding farms, forests, and beautiful open spaces that make Whidbey Island unique; and third, to give our younger generations an enduring master plan they will build upon long into the future.”