A busy year of waterfront projects ahead in Juneau, says Port Director

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Thursday, January 26th, 2023 11:52am

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A new float is being built for Aurora Harbor in Juneau this year.

Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - Carl Uchytil, the Port Director of Juneau, was a guest on Action Line on KINY radio.

He stated that the budget this year is set to be approved for the upcoming fiscal year. And he said they are busy with city waterfront projects.

"One of the items that I've been working on the last month or so, has been direction from the city manager to engage in a very comprehensive waterfront development plan," he said. "So what I've got in what will be presented to my docks harbors board tomorrow night, as well as to the Assembly on Monday will be a request for proposal for Master port planning. So what we're going to do, because of all the interest in along the waterfront from several developers, Huna Totem Corporation, the Coast Guard, with plans for an ice breaker with Goldbelt Inc.,  with our own development plans for a small cruise ship investment, we're going to take a lead, the city's gonna take a lead and doing a comprehensive master port planning that will continue from the Huna Totem proposed dock all the way down to the Seadrome dock. So that's going to be interesting, the whole idea is to synchronize the efforts of all these individual entities that are going to have plans and desires to build out the waterfront."

He said Huna Totem Corp. wants to get going on their planning, and they have communicated that they would like to be in operation in spring of 2025.

"And I think that's what we should all be working towards Huna Totem having their facilities up and running in a couple of years," Uchytil said.

He said an RFP, the request for proposal, for an engineering planning company to help to harmonize the waterfront with the individual entities. On Monday, the assembly is going to be asked to approve funding that project. "So there's a kind of two-prong effort. One is the actual RFP and the other, maybe more importantly is having the funding from the assembly to move forward with advertising and interviewing companies for this work."

He says there is also a plan for a new float to be built in Aurora Harbor. There are four small boat harbors that Docks and Harbors is charged with maintaining: Douglas Harbor, Harris Harbor, Aurora Harbor, and Statter Harbor.

He said that at Aurora Harbor, over the last three years, they've demolished the north end of the harbor, and then through a partnership with the Army Corps, they came in and did maintenance dredging.

"Over the last really six months, we've been expanding efforts to do an in-house design, to replace or to add the next main float at Aurora Harbor," he said. "So we're hopeful. We've had some supply chain issues and some procurement issues with some long lead items, primarily with electrical systems. And we're going to have a bid for that project in March. And so hopefully, if everything goes smoothly, we'll have a contract in place and we'll have a contractor on site late summer this year. It'll be about a $4 million project to build out the next main float in Aurora Harbor and then we'll have two other main floats left to rebuild in the coming years."

 

 

 

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