The Port of Bremerton’s Board of Commissioners has announced the selection of Ken Attebery to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Port. He succeeds Dick Brandenberg, who retired at the end of last year.

Attebery, who has been with the Port for the past 18 years, has the experience and knowledge of the Port’s activities that will enable him to interface smoothly with the CEOs of private enterprises doing business with the Port.

He formerly worked for the city of Bremerton in the planning department, and came to the Port of Bremerton in 1983. He was executive director for several years prior to his present appointment as CEO. He and his family live in East Bremerton.

While waiting for construction to begin on the new 21,000-square-foot hangar, the Port of Bremerton has also been busy with a host of other activities. In the Industrial Park, the new Quinalt Building has been completed, and its first tenant has moved in.

T & S International now occupies 4,000 square feet of the building’s available 12,000 square feet of space. T & S will assemble wooden cabinets for office and home applications. The parts for these cabinets are milled and drilled right in the Park by the Romark Corporation, a neighboring Industrial Park business, providing an example of how local businesses can develop in tandem.

The Kitsap Public Utilities District (PUD) is in the process of beginning to string fiber optic cables into the Industrial Park for use by tenants who require broadband communications links for their computers and phone and fax lines. The connections to this service will be undertaken by private commercial firms.

Kitsap County is about to purchase ten acres of the Port’s Industrial Park property for use as a new transfer station to accept incoming garbage collected by solid waste companies in the area and ship it out to a large landfill in Oregon. This refuse has heretofore been hauled to local landfill sites. The new transfer station will come on line in July, at which time the Olympic View Sanitary Landfill will be closed. R V Associates is the prime contractor for the job.

Port Commissioner Bill Mahan’s idea of attracting a tenant to oversee and regulate the use of the airport’s inactive runway 19 for motor sports is about to bear fruit, at least for the next five years. The runway will be leased under the name “Bremerton Motor Sports Park” by a coalition of local racing enthusiasts and car clubs until they are able to find a more suitable permanent home.

Avian Aeronautics Flight Center will become a fixed base operator (FBO) at the airport. The FBO is the flying part of Avian Aeronautics, which will be moving into the new 21,000 square foot hangar that is nearing completion. Avian has signed an 11-month lease as an interim measure while negotiations are under way.

Safe Boats International, a firm which moved to the largest (62,000 square feet) building in the Industrial Park 18 months ago, has been expanding its operation. Safe Boats is in the business of building “unsinkable” small craft for the United States Coast Guard and commercial and private users. They now occupy 43,000 square feet of the building, and employ 50 people to manufacture boats in the 11 to 50 foot size range.

Safe Boats was just awarded a sizeable contract to build boats for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Maritime Safety and Security teams. The initial contract was for $2.7 million, but it could expand to a total of $10 million for additional boats and spare parts in the future.

Bill Hansen, president and principal shareholder of the company, has indicated he may be hiring an additional 20 workers because of the new business, but has no intention of moving to a different location. He is pleased to be able to work where he lives, citing it as one of the advantages of leasing property in the Industrial Park.

The Port plans to open up six more lots in the northwest end of the Industrial Park, next to the new Quinalt building. These lots will be “pad-ready”, which means they will have the infrastructure in place and ready for new occupants to come in and start pouring concrete.

The Navy, which currently is leasing 8 acres in the Park, will be vacating its premises at the end of March.

Kitsap County is expected to move into a section on the west side of the Park to set up a Surface and Storm Water Management (SSWM) facility, which will be used to control drainage in the park.

(Editor’s Note: Ed Friedrich of The Sun contributed to this article.).