By GORDY HOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

As one of three gateways to Kitsap County by sea, Bremerton remains the dog-eared choice, poster city for all those urban centers that have felt the roots of their downtown ripped out and transplanted to the suburbs.

In Bremerton's case, it was the Kitsap Mall, the creation in Silverdale of Safeco's land-development arm, Winmar Company Inc.

A JCPenney department store, long a downtown Bremerton fixture, became a key anchor for the mall, leaving empty its massive old shell -- which still remains unoccupied -- setting on land owned by the town's founding Bremer family.

The building's blank walls and empty windows are hard to ignore even by Jim and Joanne Welch. But they are used to seeing it from across Burwell Street, where they go about their business at Evergreen Upholstery, Inc.

A Tacoma native, Joanne Welch moved here 34 years ago and raised four kids.

"It's been a wonderful place, but it was better once," she says. "I used to walk into town across the Manette Bridge and could always find what I needed. Can't do that any more."

Welch recalled the late Edward Bremer, surviving son of the town's founder, William. It was to the elder Bremer, a Seattle businessman, that the Navy in 1891 paid $50 an acre for 190 acres of raw Sinclair Inlet shoreline and went on to create its Puget Sound repair facility.

Bremer died in 1910 at age 47, leaving sons John and Edward, and Sophie, his wife.

As the legend goes, Sophie threatened to cut her sons out of the family fortune if they ever married.

Bremerton historian Fredi Perry says the family built a summer home on a beach fronting Washington Narrows, but the father died shortly after the house was completed and it was seldom used thereafter. Today this piece of Enetai Beach waterfront belongs to the Ben Cheney Trust.

While the Bremers remained in Seattle, they nevertheless owned half of Bremerton, including a department store (Bremer's) and a restaurant (The Olympic) where Joanne Welch was a waitress.

The Olympic was one of Ed Bremer's regular stops. And why not? asks Welch. Didn't he own it?

"I'd always say 'Hi, there, Mr. Bremer. How are ya?' and the manager would always warn me not to be so fresh. He'd tell me Mr. Bremer didn't like it. But I know he did. At least he liked me."

Welch says Ed Bremer was a private soul.

"He never wanted anyone to know who he was, but of course everybody knew," Welch says. "You'd see him on the street, walking with his followers, his bookkeeper and one or two others. He was the brother who died last, and was part of the reason they stole Bremerton. He didn't like change."

It came anyway. As the 1980s dawned, downtown property owners, including Bremer, balked at Winmar's offers to buy them out, then launched a flurry of subsequent lawsuits aimed at stopping the Silverdale project. Ultimately they failed.

Bremer died in 1986, leaving his property to Olympic College. But by then the town had been drained.

"We still love Bremerton a lot and still think it will come back," says Joanne Welch. "But you never know."