Walk down Commercial Street toward the water on any weekday evening and the route used to sort itself out without much thought. Park near Union Avenue, grab something to eat within sight of the dock, then either wander the shoreline or catch the ferry to Anderson Island if that was the plan. Two pieces, food and transportation, both anchored to the same three-block stretch of waterfront.
This fall, both pieces are in flux. Most people in town have clocked one of them. Almost nobody has connected the two.
The half everybody already knows
Topside Bar & Grill, the rooftop-deck restaurant that has anchored that stretch of Commercial Street since 2012, has been closed since a fire in the building last September. The owners, Niki and John, have kept a running update on their site, most recently noting that "progress is moving along" on efforts to reopen, without a firm date attached. The building also housed the Topside Coffee Room and the Anchor Room, a bottle shop and wine bar the couple had added more recently, so the closure took out three storefronts at once rather than one.
For a town this size, that is not a small gap. Residents who used to end a walk with a coffee or a glass of wine within view of the water have spent the better part of a year routing around it. The two spots absorbing most of that traffic are The Bair, housed in the historic Bair Drug & Hardware building a few blocks up, and Steilacoom Pub & Grill on Rainier Street, which keeps its bar open into the night most days of the week and still runs the karaoke and pool nights that used to split attention with Topside's rooftop crowd.
That part of the story is visible. You notice a closed restaurant. You adjust where you eat. Fine.
The half almost nobody has clocked yet
What's less visible is what's coming to the other end of that same three-block stretch. Pierce County's rehabilitation of the Anderson Island and Steilacoom ferry landings is scheduled to begin construction after Labor Day weekend this year, with completion targeted for early 2027. That timeline puts real work at the Steilacoom dock starting within the next few weeks, right as the town's rhythm shifts from summer visitors back to residents commuting on their own schedule.
The dock sits at the foot of Commercial Street, at Union Avenue, the same intersection most people already walk past on the way to whatever used to be Topside. A landing rehabilitation project does not close a restaurant. It does change what the approach to the water looks and feels like for months at a time, and for anyone who rides the ferry regularly rather than just walking down to look at it, it is the more consequential of the two disruptions.
Why the ferry's own quirks make this landing harder to absorb
The Steilacoom to Anderson Island run is not a big-city ferry with slack built into the schedule. It is a small operation with margins that are already tight before construction enters the picture.
A few things about how it runs day to day:
- Passengers heading to Ketron Island have to call in a reservation at least 60 minutes ahead of departure. There is no walk-on option for that stop.
- Every Monday, the ferry runs a dedicated fuel service, hauling gasoline and propane tankers out to Anderson Island to keep the island stocked. Pierce County treats this as critical infrastructure, not a nice-to-have, and it can bump or shift other departures that day.
- During extreme low tides, defined as zero feet and below, oversized vehicles and anything with a low-hanging bumper or hitch can be turned away at the landing entirely.
None of that is new this year. What's new is that a rehabilitation project is about to run through the fall and winter on top of a schedule that already has these built-in constraints. A route that handles ten to fourteen runs a day on a good day, with regular detours to Ketron Island and a standing Monday fuel commitment, has less room to absorb landing construction gracefully than a larger, more redundant system would.
Anyone who commutes off the peninsula for work, or who relies on the ferry to reach Pierce College's Fort Steilacoom campus for classes, already knows the free shuttle that runs between the ferry dock and the campus parking lot. That shuttle, and the Pierce Transit Route 212 bus that also connects the two points, are worth keeping in mind as backup options if landing work compresses the ferry's own capacity this season. Neither requires showing a ticket to board, which makes them easy to fall back on without extra planning.
Two disruptions, one small stretch of street, mostly separate audiences
Here is the part worth sitting with. The people who miss Topside are mostly walkers and diners, the residents who treat the waterfront as a place to end an evening. The people affected by the ferry landing work are mostly commuters and island residents, the people who treat the same three blocks as a point of departure rather than a destination.
Because those two groups don't overlap as much as you'd expect in a town this size, the conversation about "what's happening down at the water" has been splitting into two separate, smaller conversations instead of one obvious one. Ask a Topside regular what's changing this fall and you'll hear about the fire. Ask someone who rides the ferry to Anderson Island for work and you'll hear about the dock project. Few people seem to be holding both pieces at once, which is part of why the disruption feels smaller than it actually is.
Put together, though, the two threads mean the same stretch of Commercial Street is missing a restaurant on one end and gaining a construction timeline on the other, for the first time in recent memory, in the same season. That's a genuinely different waterfront than the one most residents have in their head from last summer.
What actually still runs the same
None of this touches the parts of Steilacoom that have nothing to do with the dock or the old Topside building. The Bair keeps its regular hours in the historic Bair Drug & Hardware space. Steilacoom Pub & Grill's bar, banquet room, and weekly events continue on their normal schedule. The ferry itself, even with construction layered on top, is still expected to keep running its regular service between Steilacoom, Anderson Island, and Ketron Island, since a landing rehabilitation is built around keeping the route operational rather than suspending it.
The town's food and transportation options haven't shrunk so much as rearranged themselves around two absences that happen to be landing in the same few months. For residents who've only been tracking one half of that rearrangement, this is the season to notice the other.
If you're weighing a move within Steilacoom, or wondering what a home near that stretch of waterfront is actually worth given how the neighborhood is changing right now, Cheryl Farnham at Evolve Real Estate PNW has spent years reading these small shifts in the South Sound market. Let's Connect when you're ready to talk through what it means for your own plans.
