Pea Patch: A Community Taking Shape

The Pea Patch Campus is beginning to look like the community we’ve been imagining. 

Over the summer, local contractor Island Ex completed site preparation, utility connections, stormwater management (no, that’s not a swimming pool!) and laid the foundation for a new entry road. This fall, vertical construction gets underway on the neighborhood’s 20 townhomes with completion expected by the end of 2027. Dawson Construction is building the affordable long-term rental homes, designed by Environmental Works—the same architectural firm behind April’s Grove.  

The neighborhood will include five buildings, each with four dwellings under roof; a mix of studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom townhomes affordable to households with very low incomes. Funded in part by the Washington State Housing Trust Fund, the homes will be available to seniors, people with disabilities, people exiting homelessness or marginal housing situations, veterans and local wage earners. To be eligible, applicants must currently live and/or work on Orcas Island.  

Affordable housing is about more than rent that fits the household budget. All tenants will be offered voluntary supportive services to help them make the most of the stability that affordable housing provides. A member of the support team will keep office hours in the Curtis Farmhouse commons building and provide connections to social service resources.  

Monthly rents are currently expected to range from $485 for a studio to $1,038 for a two-bedroom home. Eligibility requirements and applications will be available in fall 2027. 

A Permanent Home for the Food Bank 

OPAL’s partner at Pea Patch is the Orcas Island Food Bank, who is building a permanent home on the campus. OPAL owns the 11-acre property and will lease land to the Food Bank, just as they do for 120 OPAL homeowners and five other commercial endeavors. 

The Food Bank building will provide sufficient storage and workspace to meet the community’s food distribution needs for the next 75 years. It will also include a commercial kitchen where donated food can be transformed into prepared meals for seniors who are no longer able to cook and for people without kitchen facilities.  

Construction on the Food Bank building is expected to begin in mid-2027, with completion anticipated by the end of 2028. 

The Finish Line is Coming into View 

The campaign to build the Pea Patch Community Campus is closing in on its $40M goal. To date, roughly $34M has been raised from public, foundation and private sources to support site work and building construction. 

The remaining funds will help complete the campus, including final road surfaces, landscaping and lighting, improved greenspaces and pathways for community access, solar power and capacity building as the Food Bank prepares to own its new building and expand its services.  

For OPAL, our fundraising focus through the end of this year is the renovation of the historic Curtis Farmhouse—the place where Bart Curtis and his brothers grew up when the house stood at the corner of North Beach and Mt. Baker roads.  

The farmhouse will become the new commons building for the Pea Patch neighborhood giving this beloved piece of Orcas history a new purpose and a grand new chapter of life. 

Thank you to the many in this community whose generosity has helped us make it this far! In collaboration with the Orcas Island Community Foundation, an island-wide campaign will launch in 2027 to help finish the campus and create a lasting safety net for generations to come.