Washington Denied Bainbridge Island's Housing Extension. The City Has Until Aug. 26 to Avoid Losing Control of Its Own Zoning.

The Washington State Department of Commerce told Bainbridge Island on Aug. 5 that it would not get more time. The city had asked for 120 extra days, until mid-December, to finish rewriting its housing rules under the state's 2025 Housing Accountability Act. Commerce said no, and gave the city three weeks to do what it had spent 18 months failing to do: adopt zoning changes that clear the way for more housing in downtown Winslow.

The Bainbridge Island City Council approved a motion Aug. 11 to move forward with emergency interim regulations, 6-1, and is scheduled to formally adopt them Aug. 25, one day ahead of Commerce's Aug. 26 cutoff. Miss it, and state law lets developers bypass the city's own zoning entirely under a provision known as the Builder's Remedy, the outcome city staff have spent all of 2026 trying to avoid. The 6-1 vote papers over a fight that has been building on Bainbridge since January, when the island became one of eight Washington cities singled out for the state's toughest new housing review.

Why Commerce Said No

Commerce's denial letter, described in coverage from the Bainbridge Island Review and The Urbanist, gave three reasons. Bainbridge has been a sole-source aquifer area since 2013, a designation Commerce said has not changed the underlying Growth Management Act requirements the city is being held to. The city was already 18 months past its periodic update deadline before it asked for more time. And the specific state law changes Bainbridge still needed to adopt, Commerce found, were minor: the agency's own language called them "minimal" and said the city had "sufficiently drafted" a response already.

Laura Hodgson, Commerce's housing planning and data manager, had warned as early as a July 28 hearing that the city was "not likely able to adopt the housing element of the Comp Plan and housing development regulations by the Aug. 21 deadline," according to the Review's coverage of that hearing. The extension request that followed, filed July 27 and seeking a new deadline of roughly mid-December, was, in effect, an attempt to buy room the state had already signaled it did not think the city needed.

Bainbridge was not a random target. Commerce chose the city on Jan. 13 for its "Selected Review" process, a tougher track reserved for jurisdictions the agency judged unlikely to hit deadlines without direct oversight, out of eight cities picked statewide. Eight months later, the extension denial reads as Commerce following through on that judgment rather than reversing it.

A Council Reversal Cost the City Its Runway

The 18-month delay was not one missed deadline. It was a planning process that reversed itself. Bainbridge's planning commission spent all of 2025 working toward zoning standards for Winslow, the island's designated growth center, trying repeatedly to reach unanimous agreement rather than a simple majority. By April 2026, according to The Urbanist's July 31 reporting, a compliant package looked close.

Then, on July 15, the council voted 4-3 to reduce zoning capacity in Winslow, after the same body had previously voted to increase it. The reversal sent the regulations back to the planning commission and pushed final adoption into August, eating the last of the runway before the state's original Aug. 21 deadline. It is the kind of detail that gets lost in a headline about a state denial: Bainbridge did not run out of time because Commerce was slow to answer. It ran out of time because its own council could not hold a position on how much housing Winslow should allow.

The planning commission's approach compounded the problem. Rather than advancing a package on a simple majority once members had a workable draft, the commission spent most of 2025 trying to reach unanimous agreement among its members on zoning specifics, a standard few land-use bodies hold themselves to and one that slowed every subsequent step. By the time the council reversed itself in July, there was no longer enough calendar left to redo the work and still beat the state's original Aug. 21 date.

What the Emergency Rules Actually Do

The interim regulations the council is set to adopt Aug. 25 raise the floor area ratio to 1.0 in two Winslow districts, the Ferry Terminal area and the High School Road corridor, up from a base zoning height cap of 35 feet that has governed the core for years. That change alone allows meaningfully taller, denser buildings in the two areas closest to the ferry and the island's main north-south commuter route.

Paired with the density increase is mandatory inclusionary zoning: any project of 10 or more units must set aside 10% of units at 80% of area median income and another 10% at 110% of AMI. Commerce's affordability benchmark for the review is pegged to 120% of Kitsap County's AMI, which the Review's reporting put at roughly $2,900 a month for a one-bedroom, a number that gives Bainbridge's often-cited affordability crisis an actual dollar figure rather than a talking point.

The FAR change is a real departure for a city that has kept its downtown core low for decades. Raising the ratio to 1.0 does not guarantee any specific building height, since floor area ratio governs total square footage relative to lot size rather than stories, but developers in both districts will be able to build substantially more square footage on the same parcel than the 35-foot cap previously allowed.

The Builder's Remedy, Explained

If the council misses the Aug. 26 cutoff, state law activates the Builder's Remedy on Bainbridge Island. In practice, that means a developer can submit a project that ignores the city's zoning code outright, as long as it meets one of three affordability thresholds: 20% of units at 60% of AMI, 50% at 80% of AMI, or 100% of units at 120% of AMI. The city would lose the ability to say no on zoning grounds until it adopts regulations Commerce actually approves.

For a small island city that has spent a year and a half debating building heights block by block, that is the sharpest possible loss of control: a state-level backstop designed specifically for cities that miss housing deadlines, now one missed vote away from applying to Bainbridge for the first time.

The Builder's Remedy is not unique to Bainbridge or new to Washington law, but the island would be an early real-world test of it locally. Other Puget Sound-area cities have watched the same provision loom over their own housing-element deadlines without it actually triggering, because most eventually adopted compliant rules in time. What the council adopts Aug. 25 is explicitly labeled emergency and interim: interim city manager Ellen Schroer has said it takes effect immediately but still requires a public hearing within 60 days, meaning Bainbridge's rules stay open to revision even after the immediate Builder's Remedy threat passes.

Nearly $800,000 Already Lost

The delay already has a price tag. Bainbridge Island has forfeited close to $800,000 in state stormwater infrastructure funding tied to its non-compliance with the growth plan requirements, and the city is now effectively discouraged from applying for other state grants until it finalizes a compliant plan, per The Urbanist's reporting. That is money that does not come back once the funding cycle closes, regardless of what the council adopts on Aug. 25.

It is also a preview of what other Kitsap County jurisdictions should expect. Bainbridge was one of eight cities statewide chosen for Commerce's "Selected Review" process, the harder-edged track for cities Commerce judged least likely to hit deadlines on their own. Commerce's insistence that Bainbridge's remaining law changes were "minimal" and did not justify more time reads as a signal to the other seven: the state is not inclined to extend grace twice, and the grant money lost here is the clearest evidence of what slow-walking a state housing deadline actually costs a city, not just in political capital but in dollars that show up nowhere on a zoning map.

A nearly $800,000 gap does not simply vanish into a general fund line item. It becomes a capital project a public works department either finds new money for, defers, or drops entirely, at the same time the city is being told by the state that it was too slow on an unrelated housing mandate. And because Commerce has tied continued grant eligibility to finalizing the growth plan, the stormwater money is not a one-time loss so much as the first bill in what could become a recurring cost of staying out of compliance.

A Split Council and a Contested Legal Argument

The Aug. 11 vote to move forward with emergency rules was not unanimous, and the one dissent points to where this fight goes next. Councilmember Mike Nelson said he opposed the motion because it included market-rate upzoning in the interim development regulations, and has separately argued the entire island should be exempt from the state mandate because it sits within a Critical Aquifer Recharge Area, the same aquifer designation Commerce cited in denying the extension, but read by Nelson as grounds for exemption rather than delay. That argument has not persuaded Commerce so far, but it signals Bainbridge may not be done contesting this in some form even after the Aug. 25 adoption vote.

Councilmember Kirsten Hytopoulos, by contrast, was the swing vote that got the Aug. 11 motion to six votes, and said she backed it specifically because the mandatory inclusionary zoning was "layered on" rather than left out, a distinction that matters because a version of these rules without the affordability requirement would have been an easier, faster vote and was reportedly on the table earlier in the process. For Kitsap County renters and prospective buyers watching from Bremerton, Poulsbo or Port Orchard, the practical stake is straightforward: whichever way Bainbridge's council and Commerce resolve this, more homes get built in Winslow within the next two years — either under rules the city wrote, with income limits attached, or under a Builder's Remedy the city does not control, with fewer.