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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2012 | Vol. 28, No. 3 www.CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.com | 50¢
Life in Retsil
Callow property targeted for cleanup Chieftain motel isn’t only nuisance property on city’s list By KEVAN MOORE kmoore@soundpublishing.com
Chris Chancellor/staff photo
Above, a Lumi healing pole stands in front of the dinning hall at the Washington Veterans Home in Restil. The dinning hall serves residents in the cafeteria or to rooms for those unable to walk to meals. Right, 16-year resident of the Washington Veterans Home at Restil, Bill Nickerson stands at the boundary of the old Restil and the new. Nickerson said he was once not happy to live at the veterans home near Port Orchard, but has found happiness with all the changes and new buildings in recent years.
Veterans at home in local 102 year-old facility By Chris Chancellor cchancellor@soundpublishing.com
Bill Nickerson cringes at the memory when he moved from his native Seattle to Washington Veterans Home at Retsil in 1996. It was a much different setup than veterans living there now know. “I thought the thing was going to fall down around us,” Nickerson said. It’s no longer Nickerson’s concern regarding the Washington State Veterans Home at Retsil, which was originally constructed in 1910. In 2005,
the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs finished a $47 million project adding 240 new beds and 170,000 square feet to the veterans’ home overlooking the water. Nickerson, 79, is among the longest tenured residents at Retsil, which is one of three veterans homes in the state. The other two are in Orting and Spokane; and a significant effort is being made by some in the Legislature and the state VA to get a home built in Walla Walla. For many of Retsil’s 263 veteran residents, the home and its bluff-top grounds is their final living arrangement in life. Nickerson experienced a lot in life, and of course during combat. But, there is one element of life in Retsil that fazes him; death.
He twice has walked in to discover his roomate had died. Now the old sailor has become wary of becoming too close with fellow veterans living at the home. For those reasons he now lives in a single room, which became available after another veteran died. While those scenarios are uncontrollable, Nickerson and several other veterans mostly were effusive in their praise of the care they receive at Retsil. Richard and Vivian Best, both are 85, started life in Restil in January 2011 after she suffered a stroke. Both initially had some reservations moving into the veterans home. “I couldn’t open a door when I came here,” Vivian Best said. “The nurses See RETSIL, A12
The old Chieftain Motel isn’t the only property sitting at the top of the City of Bremerton’s cleanup list. Following a brief executive session during a Weds., Sept. 19, business meeting, the city council voted unanimously to allow City Attorney Roger Lubovich to pursue enforcement and legal action regarding the motel and a separate property at 1926 North Callow Ave. Lubov ich sa id that the police have responded to 78 calls to the hotel in the last eight months and that the new owners have so far failed to obtain a certificate of occupancy and therefore can’t get a business license through the city. In addition, county prosecutors are now targeting the motel with legal action for failing state Dept. of Health inspections and lacking a transient accommodation license. Lubovich said that the county’s effort to get an injunction to close the motel is separate from the city’s efforts to bring it into compliance. “The owner has been working with us, taking it day by day,” Lubovich said. “Our highest priority is the safety issue. If some-
body gets hurt and we know about it, we’ve got issues.” Lubovich said that he got a call from Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge about the state violations shortly after the city began targeting the Chieftain for cleanup. “It was just coincidental that they came up at the same time,” Lubovich said. The Callow Avenue property cleanup is one that the city is, so far, flying solo on. Lubovich described it as a residence that’s been sitting empty for two years that used to have a car repair shop in a big shed in its backyard. “There’s trash all over the place and it’s in a nice neighborhood,” Lubovich said. “There are barrels of stuff back there and we don’t know if its got oil in it or what. We just can’t accept it the way it’s sitting.” Lubovich said that a man named Robert Bottorff is listed as the property owner on the deed, but efforts to locate him have been unsuccessful. “We’ll probably have to file some sort of lawsuit to get authority to go clean it up,” Lubovich said. “We want to try and clean up the outside and secure the builduing and then we’ll see what happens.”