Although Kirkland-based Chaffey Homes, which has an office in Silverdale and has built literally hundreds of homes in Kitsap County, pulled out of the deal to develop the 48-acre area known as Eastpark in Bremerton, the city says it is moving ahead with plans to build the mixed residential development. Prospective developers were due to be interviewed at the end of May, according to the city’s Economic Development Director Gary Sexton.

The project will then go through a due diligence stage including market analysis, as well as master planning and permitting. The property was a gift to the city from the U.S. Navy, which has owned it for about five decades. Original plans called for about 300 or more homes to be built.

Chaffey Homes, whose contract said either party can terminate the agreement if they didn’t reach consensus on the development plans, had earlier said the project did not appear as a good match after a review of the market feasibility study.

Things are going a little faster with another Bremerton housing project, the 80-acre low-income development known as Westpark that formerly was a shipyard.

“We do not want to maintain all low-income residents in one area. The goal is to rebuild the land in such a manner that will help us move these folks around the city,” said Gary Tusberg of the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority. “We have to come up with a strategy to relocate the units and the residents.”

Similar efforts are going on all around the country, with cities looking to integrate low-income housing into other neighborhoods instead of clustering them as they have in the past. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a mandate in the 1990s calling for such changes

After several years, Westpark should re-emerge as a mixed-use area, with commercial and retail spaces in between single-family and multiple-unit housing, in the style of a community village. About 1,200 resident units are planned along with 250,000 square feet of commercial space that will include an anchor tenant, likely a grocery store. Senior housing will also be included.

“The objective is to create these types of nodes throughout the city,” Tusberg said. Part of the redevelopment includes an assisted living facility, slated to break ground by mid-summer. While proposals are being requested from firms, the city has to work on relocating the residents from the current 600 units.

The project, developed jointly by the Bremerton Housing Authority and the KCCHA, was estimated to cost about $300 million, various funding is being pursued, including state and federal.