The topic of prostitution or homelessness is seldom seen in the pages of a business journal. These subjects are complicated and controversial. I would just as soon as not get into them if it weren’t for a previous story. The Downtown Bremerton mural saga has run the gamut in the redevelopment process of an old city. The mural project has taken on faces, that I didn’t expect to meet in person – the homeless, transients and prostitutes.

Last week the circle gave another bounce and its appendages glommed onto a tall staggering American Indian whose breath smelled of alcohol, an artist perched on a tall ladder painting an image of a soaring eagle, a well-dressed man getting out of his polished Mercedes, a thin man with a New York accent repeating he was drunk and apologizing for his companion’s drunkenness – and then there was me.

It was 9:30 in the morning. We were all in the parking lot and alley of the 7-11 at 6th and Park Avenue. Across the street were dozens of construction workers building the new large Windermere complex and the other corner saw the Kitsap Bank doing business as usual. Behind the convenience store was the house that I bought almost two years ago that began this saga of doing murals to improve a neighborhood. I discovered that the man with the Mercedes was an out-of-town businessperson looking at the empty neighborhood building for Laundromat possibilities. We need a Laundromat, but not an unattended 24-hour facility in a crime and transient area, which so many are trying to clean up. I took him to the back walls of the buildings to show him the massive 3 wall mural project that was bringing a little hope to a downtrodden combination residential and commercial district. Standing by the artist’s ladder he nodded in agreement while inches away the swaying homeless man generously contributed his own unrelated opinions.

Why does this have any significance in a business-oriented publication? If you followed this column 20 months ago you’ll recall that I purchased a house intending it to be an artist studio and mural project. Within the first few weeks – repairs began, the house was painted rose with dark blue trim, a transient was beaten and killed on the front sidewalk, the area was rezoned commercial and the formed mural committee voted to paint murals on walls other than mine.

Significant? Yes, because something began to happen that is defining “beginning” in an economically depressed town. This one little scene that I share with you speaks volumes. It’s a city’s pot of soup that you won’t find in Silverdale. There is a different recipe to Bremerton. That building under construction – other than the old J.C. Penney’s, is the first major such downtown project in over fifty years. The homeless men – a few of them may urinate on the walls but they have adopted the murals and protect them against taggers. The man in the Mercedes – he agreed an attendant should be required in a Laundromat in this area.

This descriptive dialogue may offend some, but it is a reality in a pocket of recovery in the redevelopment of downtown Bremerton This one house and this one mural project in this one neighborhood has become a barometer – to be continued later.