With just four weeks left before the deadline, the borough is pressing ahead to complete its application for a $50 million federal grant to help pay for several projects to boost the town’s economic future.

“We all know we’ve been economically depressed” since the timber industry collapsed more than a generation ago, Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director, told the assembly at a work session on Jan. 27.

The federal grant, through the Economic Development Administration, would help pay for redevelopment of borough-owned at the former 6-Mile Mill site, additional fill to expand the Marine Service Center and create an access point for a new dock for smaller cruise ships, an extension of the City Dock, and a new flume to direct water into Wrangell’s reservoirs.

Though the 6-Mile and downtown waterfront development plans have drawn most of the attention as borough officials have discussed the grant application at public meetings, officials said the flume replacement project is essential to meeting the community’s future water needs.

Wrangell loses an estimated 15% of the water that flows through the old, broken-up and leaking flume, Borough Manager Mason Villarma told the assembly. The 250-foot-long open-culvert flume — put together in the 1960s, he said — directs runoff into the reservoirs.

“This is an easy one,” he said of the need to replace the flume to ensure the town has sufficient water during the seafood processing season and to accommodate more demand if the borough is successful in attracting new industries, commercial and residential customers.

Borough staff plan to present preliminary engineering reports and costs of the flume, 6-Mile and downtown waterfront proposals at an assembly workshop at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 10, at City Hall.

The public will have its chance the next week to get more information and ask questions at a town hall meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Nolan Center.

The town hall is planned “to gather community input and better understand public perspectives, questions and priorities related to the projects,” according to the notice on the borough website.

Corvus Design, which has won awards for its design work at the Anan Wildlife Observatory and Wrangell Mariners’ Memorial, will moderate the town hall meeting.

Wrangell is eligible for the federal disaster rebuilding grant because of the deadly November 2023 landslide at 11.2-Mile Zimovia Highway which killed six people. The federal program is intended to help communities rebuild their economies after a disaster.

The grant program requires a public-private coalition, Villarma said, to show that the federal aid would be leveraged to attract private dollars, creating jobs and boosting the town’s economy.

The Economic Development Administration will look at how much private investment is included in the overall plan as it decides whether it will approve a grant, Thomas said. The application deadline is March 3.

Flume replacement

The flume that diverts flow from the watershed above the reservoirs was built atop wooden cribbing, Thomas explained, adding that a lot of the wood blocks have fallen away and the metal culvert has become disjointed.

The preliminary plan — which could change as engineers work on design and cost estimates — is to replace the entire structure with a concrete flume, 250 feet long, about 3 feet wide and 2.5 feet high, said Amber Al-Haddad, capital projects director.

A concrete waterway will last two to three times longer than building a new wood structure, said Tom Wetor, public works director.

The rough “pioneer road” up past the upper reservoir would need to be improved in order for workers to remove and replace the flume, Al-Haddad said

City Dock extension

Preliminary plan calls for adding a 150-foot-long, 50-foot-wide floating extension to the north end of the City Dock, with fenders on both sides so that boats can tie up on the outside and inside faces, Al-Haddad said.

The mooring dolphin at the north end of the existing 405-foot-long dock would be removed to make room for the extension, with a new dolphin installed farther out.

The floating extension would allow cruise ships to dock at all tides, rather than anchoring offshore and ferrying their passengers to town by small boats.

“A lot of ships can tie up at the City Dock, but it’s not comfortable,” Villarma explained of several cruise ships that match up better for passengers to disembark with a floating dock than across a steep ramp at high or low tides.

Water and electrical service would be extended to the floating dock, Al-Haddad said.

The borough collects higher port fees from ships that tie up than it does when they anchor and ferry passengers to shore, Thomas said.

Marine Service Center and
downtown fill expansion

If the funding comes through, the work could include adding about 1 to 1.5 acres of fill to expand the Marine Service Center, Al-Haddad said.
The fill would be added on the City Hall side of the marine center. Water service and storm drainage would be part of the design.

The intent, Villarma said, is to add fill to the waterfront from the existing barge ramp to the Marine Service Center, “all the way across.”

The borough closed down the barge ramp almost a year ago over safety and structural concerns with the half-century-old steel structure. Officials are working with Alaska Marine Lines to relocate the barge landing and freight yard to the 6-Mile property, which would open up the downtown waterfront land for other uses.

The borough is still working on a mock-up, Thomas said, but if the freight yard moves out and the additional fill is built up, the area could be developed for retail use, green space and a waterfront walk corridor.

“There are definitely layers and phases to this,” she said, adding that it would not all happen at once.

The borough already has signed a tidelands lease with American Cruise Lines to allow the company to install a 300-foot-long floating dock along the new fill to accommodate its ships, which berth overnight.

The company hopes to have the facility ready for the 2027 summer tourism season.

While the borough will pay for the fill, the cruise line will pay for the dock facility.

Borough officials at the Jan. 27 work session said the exact layout of the new dock has not yet been decided, but it will be positioned so that it does not interfere with operations at the City Dock or impede access to the Marine Service Center.

6-Mile deepwater port

The biggest piece of the grant package is turning the former mill property, which the borough purchased in 2022 for $2.5 million, into a deepwater port for industrial and commercial activities

If the federal grant comes through, the money would go toward extending water and sewer lines and constructing roads on the property, Thomas said.

A new entrance and exit road from the industrial subdivision to Zimovia Highway would be constructed, Al-Haddad said, and the project would include removing the deteriorated bulkhead along the waterfront and replacing it with armor rock to protect the shoreline.

Tideline Construction is the first occupant of the area, running its scrap metal recycling operation and moving its construction business to Wrangell from Juneau last year. The borough sold several acres at the southern end of the property to Tideline last year.

Next up could be JAG Marine Group, which is looking at building a shipyard and marine repair business at the property; a new barge landing and freight yard project led by Alaska Marine Lines; and a small-scale data center at the back of the property, close to the highway, proposed by a California-company Greensparc which installed a similar, but smaller, data center in Cordova last year.

The 42-acre parcel would be shared, Villarma said, with 10 acres for Tideline, 22 acres for JAG, 4 acres for the freight yard, about 1.5 acres for Greensparc and about 1.5 acres for the borough, which would like to install a small generator station at the site to provide backup for the industrial subdivision and residential users out the road.

That preliminary layout would leave a few acres available at the south end of the property.

The assembly at its Jan. 27 regular meeting, after the work session, unanimously approved spending $550,000 as the borough’s 50-50 share with JAG of a million-dollar preliminary engineering, design and feasibility study of the shipyard project.

The money would come from the borough’s Mill Property Development Fund, which had a balance of almost $1.3 million.

Assembly Member Dan Powers asked Villarma about the risk of paying half the cost of the work if the federal grant does not come through or JAG decides not to proceed with the shipyard project.

The borough would be out the money if the development plan fails to gain federal or JAG investment, Villarma said, though he added all indications are that the plan will succeed.

The manager said he has been talking with JAG “every day and weekend for the past eight weeks.”

He also noted that if the entire 6-Mile development goes ahead, JAG would see increased efficiency in its shipyard operations by having the barge landing next door for steel, materials and equipment deliveries.