The HomeBase store is Silverdale is just one of several big box store locations that are currently sitting empty. Other include the former Good Guys which is within sight of HomeBase as well as Krause and HomeLife Furniture.

Where have all the big-boxes gone? Local experts are doing some out-of-the-box thinking to come up with an answer.

And it’s turns out its pretty good news for Silverdale, which was home to most of them.

It’s the national economy, not Kitsap’s, contend local analysts, that’s mostly to blame for the losses in the past year or so of mega-stores like HomeBase, Krauss Furniture, Good Guys, and Sears HomeLife. All are examples of national chains that ran into financial trouble and closed either all or a significant number of stores. Kitsap itself is not only holding its own, but sitting pretty as the post-Sept. 11 defense buildup starts to pour dollars into the local economy. Two new submarines, for instance, will soon be based in Kitsap County, bringing about 500 new families into the area.

“It seems like most of these big-box decisions are part of the broader economic system, with problems way beyond anything that had to do with Silverdale,” said Windermere commercial broker Joe Michelsen. “It isn’t Silverdale that’s causing these people to go out of business. It’s either regional or national reorganizations.”

The only one that may be partly due to over saturation of the local market, he said, was the recent Good Guys closure. It faced stiff competition after the arrival of two huge newcomers.

“Circuit City and Best Buy were eating their lunch,” Michelsen said of Good Guys. “And the Good Guys there was not in a good location.”

Others think even Good Guys’ pullout had nothing to do with the local economy.

“What’s happening in the big picture is an evolution,” says Rich Rucker, with The Rucker Group. “Somebody like Good Guys comes out with an idea of an electronics store, and the idea is successful. Then Best Buy comes out with a big-box, one-stop shop. Good Guys is kind of like a dinosaur. Retailing is a very competitive business.”

But the question of what will fill these big boxes is a bit trickier. One of them, however — Krauss Furniture — is already undergoing renovations for a new tenant, Party City, which is scheduled to open its doors next month. It was a perfect match, since furniture stores like Krauss and HomeLife have less parking than most retail businesses require.

There are also rumors – but no inked deals – of interest in the Silverdale area by Ikea, GIJoe’s and Whole Foods Market. If they do come, no one knows if they’ll move into an existing box or build their own.

“What happens,” explains Rucker, “is they do a market study, and they do a site search of existing buildings and raw land. They have a formula for what they can pay per square foot, and they compare what it would cost to use an existing building versus building a new one.”

In the case of the enormous HomeBase building, finding a tenant could be a real challenge.

“There aren’t a whole lot of 113,000-square-foot users out there,” commented Rucker. A company like GIJoe’s could use half of it and search for a tenant for the rest, but that’s not likely, he said.

“Most of those retail companies are not in the business of speculating.”

Meanwhile, widespread rumors of Old Navy moving to Silverdale have gone by the wayside. The company is having too much trouble keeping The Gap stores afloat in the face of the competition from their own sister stores.

They’ve been stealing business from themselves,” noted Englehart.

Some have suggested seeking a light-industrial or manufacturing tenant for the HomeBase facility. But Michelsen doubts that will happen. It might not be conducive to the surrounding retail environment, he said, and in any case, the property is far too pricey.

“They can go into industrial space for a much cheaper rate,” he noted.

Although the future of the existing big-boxes is uncertain, the prospects for Silverdale look promising. As the regional retail hub of a county where half the paychecks come from the government, a military buildup can only be good news economically. Even for 2001, the Kitsap Mall experienced its best year ever in terms of rates per square foot.

“Our occupancy level wasn’t the greatest, because of the national retailers closing their stores,” noted Engelhard. “But we reached a benchmark $400 a square foot at the Kitsap Mall.”

Kitsap’s slow growth is looking pretty good these days, in comparison to the dot-com devastation to the east. The local business community hopes large retailers will sit up and take notice when they do their annual reviews of possible expansion sites.

Engelhard is hoping to find a new anchor in the near future for the vacant space at Kitsap Place, which several years ago lost a Navy contractor that was occupying a good deal of space. After a tenant is signed, the property will be renovated to suit, said Engelhard.

“We hope to be able to announce an anchor sometime soon,” he said. “We’re aggressively seeking one.”

His phone could start ringing before too long, just like Rucker’s. He’s been getting more calls per week on Silverdale property than he has in the past few years.

“I think Silverdale and Kitsap County are going to get attention now,” he predicted. “In our situation, the bad cycle has ended and the good cycle is on its way. I happen to believe it’s already started.”.