Bainbridge Island based BC&J Architecture, Planning and Construction Management together with Roche Harbor Resort Village General Manager Brent Snow, recently finished the design of a planned unit development, Roche Harbor Resort Village. The plan includes renovating the historic waterfront resort’s existing buildings, a new village with a commercial district and a community of new homes for year-round residents.

The San Juan County Hearing Examiner is shortly expected to review the county planning department’s staff report recommending approval. If the plan for the 2,200-acre property is approved, all necessary permits can move forward. They include planned unit development, shoreline sustainable development, shoreline conditional use and long subdivision.

The key to the plan is a concept based on the new urbanism theory of containing sprawl by defining a center and edge to the village. The majority of activity is concentrated in a “Village Center” and housing is located within a five-minute’s walk from there.

The new residences, radiating from the center, are craftsman-inspired vernacular cottages situated on a village green park.

The revitalization of Roche Harbor began in 1996, when the Roche Harbor Community Plan was adopted as part of the San Juan Comprehensive Plan in 1999. In 2001, Peter Brachvogel AIA, filed the Planned Unit Development application with the county; public meetings were held that same year.