Trans-Vitalization

Demolition begins

Home foundation after demolition

That's precisely what the authority is doing as it transforms, using a HUD HOPE VI revitalization grant, its West Park public housing complex into Bay Vista, a $300 million project that will include retail shops, office buildings and, when complete in 2013, some 850 units of rental and homeownership housing.

Seventy-five percent of West Park's residents already have relocated to other affordable housing with the balance scheduled to move by December. And the demolition crews are charging ahead.

By the time they are done, the crews will have an almost 38,000 ton pile of debris. In decades past, it would have been carted straightaway to a dump. Not anymore. All but 2,400 tons of debris - a "whopping" 93 percent of the rubble, says The Kitsap Sun-will be recycled.

"Old walls, floors and framing," The Sun reports, "will be converted into steam energy. Window glass will be transformed into new windows. Metals go to a scrap yard. Even asphalt used to patch the roads will be broken down and used again. Big trees that will have to be cut down will be sent to the lumber mill. And soil that's removed will be sifted and replaced."

The authority's even recycling its plants, offering encouraging Bremerton residents to come by and, for free, pick up rhododendron, lilac and rose bushes that otherwise might not survive the hubbub of demolition and construction.

"I think it's real smart," Art Castle of the Homebuilders Association of Kitsap County told The Sun. And not just for environmentally. The authority estimated that the cost of demolishing West Park would be $190 a ton. But recycling the debris will earn the authority $128 a ton, leaving a net cost of just $62 a ton. Green demolition, in other words, begets green savings - almost $4.7 million of green!

And the authority plans to go even greener. Once the demolition of West Park is done and the resulting debris is recycled, the authority intends to make sure that the apartments, townhouses and homes that will comprise the new Bay Vista meet LEED energy efficiency standards.

"We have an opportunity," authority executive director Kurt Wiest told The Sun, "to do something that's environmentally responsible." In both the tear down and build up, it's an opportunity the Bremerton authority is meeting.