Perry Barrett and Bainbridge Island found each other at just the right moment.
It was 1994, and islanders were not too long removed from saving the first 240 acres of the Grand Forest from development, and were turning their eyes toward Gazzam Lake. Preservation was in the air. Barrett, meanwhile, joined the Bainbridge Island Park and Recreation District (the “Metro” would come later) as a planner with a background in open space and trails.
It was a timely match.
“The community had this shared vision that ‘if you don’t buy it now, it’ll go away as an opportunity,’” Barrett recalls. “That was very much true, and even more true today than even the most far-sighted people could see.”
Over the next 29 years, Barrett would play a quiet but essential role in expanding a modest park system into the treasure that islanders know and enjoy today.
Working from a hopelessly cluttered nook in the Park District’s old Strawberry Hill office – “organized chaos, but it worked out,” he says – Barrett chased down competitive grants, helped the district through labyrinthine permitting for countless park projects, and brought people together for property donations that expanded parks and built trails to connect them.
Name a Bainbridge Island park, and you can probably find Perry Barrett’s mark on it.
“It’s safe to say Bainbridge Island’s park system, really our island environment and quality of life, would look a lot different today, if Perry hadn’t found his way here,” says Mary Meier, Parks & Trails Foundation. “His impact is incalculable.”
Barrett’s trajectory reflected the growth and growing stability of the Park District itself.
Formed in 1965 to serve all of Bainbridge Island outside of Winlsow, the District’s holdings in 1994 included Battle Point and Strawberry Hill parks, the Manzanita horse trails, and a handful of smaller neighborhood parks. Fay Bainbridge and Fort Ward were still careworn, backwater corners of the Washington State Parks system. Future gems like Blakely Harbor and Pritchard parks were barely imaginable.
The Park District operated on a 2-year levy cycle, so the whole system was always on the verge of shutting down without 60 percent, supermajority support on the next operations levy. Levies often failed on the first try.
But good timing and Barrett’s skillset slotted him into a close circle of park and open space advocates, who worked in concert with the Park District, the City of Bainbridge Island, the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and the Bainbridge Island Land Trust to grow the system.
Barrett brought in about $17 million in federal, state and county grants over the years, matched by local funds and leveraged by the passion and professional expertise of committed volunteers. A City Open Space Bond in 2001 helped create or expand more than a dozen parks, and grew precious public shoreline access.
Island parks grew from less than 600 acres in 1994 to more than 1,500 acres today, with 48 miles of public trails.
Along the way, voters approved a change to “metropolitan” park district status, finally giving the district financial stability and the chance to plan toward the horizon.
Always, somewhere in the background, there was Perry Barrett.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that without Perry’s help, I don’t know if we would have been so successful in obtaining grant money from various sources,” says Connie Waddington, a veteran of the Grand Forest, Gazzam Lake and City Open Space campaigns. “He always knew the best grants to apply for, and then did the work that brought that money to the island.”
Waddington, Parks & Trails Foundation board member Andy Maron and others recall countless trips to Olympia, where Barrett would testify in favor of state funding for island parks.
“He could sell a project like nobody else,” Waddington says.
Adds former Park Commissioner Dave Shorett: “I doubt there has been anyone in Washington state who has been as effective as Perry in obtaining grant money for his community. And always Perry has been known for his big heart and generous soul.”
Barrett credits community members who always stepped up when he needed special knowledge or support to complete a project.
“This is an amazing community,” he said. “It’s got a lot of resources and when they’re coordinated, we have so many tools and opportunities available here – a lot of good hearts and compassion as well.
“It just needs to be focused. And a grant is a great way to focus it.”
Barrett says he’s most proud to have played a role in creating Pritchard Park.
A Superfund cleanup site fouled by many decades of creosote wood-treating operations and mired in the owner’s bankruptcy, the 50-acre property at Bill Point was nonetheless coveted as a park site. The purchase effort stretched to include the island’s Legislative and Congressional delegations, the Suquamish Tribe, the Bainbridge Island Land Trust and Trust for Public Lands, and many private donors.
Cleanup of the beach and uplands allowed development of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, which Barrett says “had an important story to tell, and will be telling that story fortuitously for many, many years.”
The park opened in 2007 and honors the late Joel Pritchard, who served as Congressman and Washington lieutenant governor and shares credit for inventing pickleball.
When the point itself is finally given a clean bill of health, the fence will come down and islanders will get a shoreline park experience like none other – Eagle Harbor rounding spectacularly into the waters of Puget Sound, with Mt. Rainier as a backdrop.
“That wonderful view will one day be accessible to the public,” Barret said. “That’s neat.”
Barrett was honored by colleagues and friends in March, feted for his litany of park accomplishments, developing four Comprehensive Plans for the district, as well as enduring more than 700 Park Board meetings and regularly baking brownies for his office.
“Perry has been the heart and soul of Bainbridge parks for a long, long time,” said Frank Stowell, who championed the 1999 creation of Blakely Harbor Park – for which Barrett, as usual, secured key grant funding,
Dan Hamlin, the Park District’s Director of Operations, credited Barrett for a positive attitude and “stick-to-itiveness,” which he described as both impressive and contagious.
“Both qualities helped him play the long game on some very difficult projects that dramatically improved the community’s recreation opportunities,” Hamlin said, “Hidden Cove dock, the Blakely Harbor bridge, nearly every trail on the Island, just to name a few.”
As to the brownies?
“I like brownies,” Barrett said. “They figured in nicely with our Monday morning meetings.”