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By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Today was the third Sunday that Admiral Church worshipped in its temporary home at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church. It’s moved out of its longtime home at 4320 SW Hill, as has the preschool that had occupied its basement. All this, as the next step in the site’s transformation to affordable homeownership with a new home for the church and the community organizations it hosts.
While the plan in partnership with Homestead Community Land Trust is progressing, demolition is not imminent – midyear 2026 at the soonest. But you won’t see the old church building morph into a tagged, squatter-occupied shell of a building.
It’s already morphed, in fact … into the Admiral HUB.
Part of the HUB is a continued home, for now, for the aforementioned community organizations. You’ll see the Admiral Neighborhood Association there this Tuesday, for example; ANA has met there for years.
But it’s not just about meetings. What inspired us to ask for a chat about the building’s interim status was a reader tip about the heart of it: @ Bear Island.
At the heart of @ Bear Island is someone whose work you have probably seen, even if you don’t immediately recognize his name: Mike Henderson.
He’s an Admiral Church congregant, and prolific artist. We published an in-depth story about him by WSB senior contributor Christopher Boffoli last year, when he was still painting enigmatic messages in highly visible spots, such as a retaining wall on California south of Andover.
Admiral Church’s Anita Shaffer explained that when they decided against leaving the building vacant, after discussions with Homeland CLT and their insurance company, Henderson seemed like the ideal caretaker: “He’s such a creative guy.”
(Anita Shaffer and Mike Henderson in the HUB/Bear Island kitchen)
For starters, he and others have “been de-preschooling the basement,” as Shaffer puts it, although the colorfully painted rooms already seem naturally suited to creativity.
“So we have this massive space and at least seven months to make it up as we go along,” Henderson explains. “The exciting challenge is to use the whole buffalo.” That means opening the space to a wide range of possibilities, with people collaborating.
One of the early collaborators, Celeste, elaborates: “We want to bring the community together to see what people can do.” Workshops, for example, might not take the typical format that some might find “scary” when asked to teach what they know. Maybe just spending a little time planting a seed and sharing their skills.
Henderson recounts the thrill of inviting passersby to participate in his murals – “give people the (paint) roller and give them the chance to make art” – and hopes @ Bear Island will be a place where people can “try things.”
There’ll be music, too, a weekly jazz jam starting next month in what was the church sanctuary and will now be known as “the theater.” (The church’s pastor Rev. Andrew Conley-Holcom says they’ve had a ceremony to “de-consecrate” that space, and there’ll soon be a ceremony about removing the sanctuary’s cross and its “complicated” symbolism.) While the Admiral Church organ is going into storage for now, the piano is staying. The space will have “theatrical lighting and sound.” It’ll be open for rentals as a concert venue, too.
What Henderson most wants you to know is that, rather than fleshing out a set of ideas by finding people to make them happen, they want to find people and then let the ideas happen. “Just be in the same room and plug into the creative energy.” He expects it will be “magical.”
Rev. Conley-Holcom agrees – seeing it as a “play space” most of all.
So how do you get involved? Henderson says they have open hours during which you can just “wander in.”
Another participant in our conversation with the key players added, “It’s very easy to get plugged in here. Just sh up!”
One possibility for the space is a continuously open “pay what you can” thrift shop to raise money for @ Bear Island; Celeste already has sparked some of that energy by having a vintage sale there. (Shaffer notes that the HUB remains under Admiral Church’s “nonprofit banner,” and that the church donated $1,000 to get it launched, as well as helping apply for grant money to underwrite the jazz jams.)
What @ Bear Island has in abundance already is the spirit of fun. Henderson laughs that while the @ Bear Island name is a tribute to the Native name Me-Kwa-Mooks, the mascot is not a bear but a rabbit. “I like the confusion!”
The pastor says what he likes most about it is that it “embodies one of my core values, relationship first” and Henderson, he says, is an ace relationship-builder: “He’ll introduce you to people HE didn’t even know.”
This will all lead to one thing, Henderson says:
“Joy.”
You can “wander in” 4-7 pm Tuesdays-Fridays for now; find @ Bear Island updates here.
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