Editing Bremerton, Washington (section)

===1990–present===
[[Image:Bremerton, WA - Norm Dicks Government Center.jpg|thumb|The Norm Dicks Government Center]]

Despite a hard-fought battle throughout the mid-1990s by local politicians to have the decommissioned and mothballed USS ''Missouri'', already in the Bremerton Navy Yard, stay in Bremerton as a museum ship and tourist attraction, Secretary of the Navy [[John H. Dalton]] awarded the ship to the [[Pearl Harbor Naval Base]], Hawaii, in 1998. It now sits near the [[USS Arizona Memorial|USS ''Arizona'' Memorial]] to demonstrate where U.S. involvement in World War II started on December 7, 1941, and where it ended by the signing of the [[Japanese Instrument of Surrender|instrument of surrender]] by the Japanese on board the USS ''Missouri,'' on September 2, 1945.

Beginning with the building of a waterfront boardwalk and marina in 1992, Bremerton had begun the process of revitalizing its downtown community. That same year, the Bremerton Historic Ships Association opened the destroyer {{USS|Turner Joy|DD-951}} to public tours at the end of the boardwalk; the ship was built in the Puget Sound area in 1958, commissioned in 1959, and had played a back-up role in the 1964 [[Gulf of Tonkin incident]] that further escalated U.S. involvement in the [[Vietnam War]] with the Congressional passage of the [[Gulf of Tonkin Resolution]], allowing President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] to send fighting troops in addition to the "advisors" already on the ground in Vietnam.

In 2000, Bremerton saw the opening of the waterfront multimodal bus/ferry terminal and a hotel/conference center complex in 2004. The high-rise [[Norm Dicks]] Government Center also opened that year, housing City Hall and other government offices. The Waterfront Fountain Park and Naval History Museum adjacent to the Bremerton Bus/Ferry Terminal opened in 2007, and a newly expanded marina with more boat capacity was completed in 2008. Plans to build an extension to the current boardwalk from the USS ''Turner Joy'' to Evergreen Park is in the litigation stage. Even though the boardwalk extension project is fully funded, opposition to the extension by the Suquamish Tribe concerning the impact to treaty fishing rights threatens the project. Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott, a 132-room hotel, opened in March 2010 on the site of the old City Hall building made obsolete by the new Norm Dicks Government Building.

Condominiums were built on the waterfront to lure more people to live and shop in the downtown area as part of the revitalization effort. However, construction delays and economic downturn forced the builder of the publicly funded Harborside Condominium complex, the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority, to fall $40.5 million in debt. That debt later was taken on by Kitsap County, which hired a marketing firm to sell the remaining units at a lower-than-anticipated price.<ref>[http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/may/15/kitsap-county-likely-take-condo-debt/ Kitsap County Likely to Take on Debt for Bremerton Condos] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090521182412/http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/may/15/kitsap-county-likely-take-condo-debt/ |date=May 21, 2009 }}</ref> The privately built 400-condominium complex north of the Harborside complex opened shortly before the Harborside complex and also did not sell as well as projected. The remaining empty condos were eventually sold at auction for a lower cost.

The {{convert|2.5|acre|adj=on}} Harborside Fountain Park opened on May 5, 2007. Located on the waterfront just steps away from the Kitsap Conference Center, the park features five large copper-ringed fountains, wading pools, and lush landscaping. The park will also be home to the Harborside Heritage Naval Museum.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/07/prweb541976.htm|title=Harborside Fountain Park Opens in Downtown Bremerton|website=PRWeb|access-date=Jun 13, 2019|archive-date=January 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210116185840/https://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/07/prweb541976.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

A tunnel underneath downtown, traversing from the ferry terminal to Highway 304 (Burwell Street), was opened to funnel traffic from the car ferry away from downtown streets. A new fountain park above the tunnel blends water and art, along with the bow of a ship and the [[conning tower]] of a submarine as a tribute to the workers at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard over the years. The stations along the walk include pictures of the shipyard, workers, and shipbuilding and repair statistics.

The popular Blackberry Festival is held annually during [[Labor Day]] weekend on the waterfront boardwalk to celebrate everything [[blackberry]]. Local residents, shopkeepers and growers bring their blackberry ice creams, pastries, pies, jams, jellies, candies, and even ciders and wines to this annual event. Free entertainment includes music by local musicians and entertainers performing throughout the three-day festival, the Berry Fun Run, and the Blackberry Criterium Bike Race. Bremerton National Airport sponsors the annual Blackberry Festival Fly-In, with shuttle service provided by Kitsap Transit to the festival. As the festival's background story goes, the downtown waterfront of Bremerton where the festival takes place was a massive overgrowth of wild blackberry bushes that were removed to build the waterfront Fountain Park, Boardwalk, Marina and Bus/Ferry Terminal.