The new marine haulout and boatyard at Sitka’s Gary Paxton Industrial Park is a year out from completion, although no ground has been broken yet. Board members heard an optimistic update from the municipal engineer last week.
The city received two “highly competitive” bids for the project, according to municipal engineer Michael Harmon. Now, the goal is to see how well costs for the winning bidder, Western Marine Construction, align with design estimates.
Harmon spoke to the board of the industrial park last week (3-18-24).
“So I’m very antsy to get into that step to really feel like we can come back to you with much higher confidence in our overall approach,” said Harmon. “I’m still very confident in it but I’d like to hear that from the contractor.”
Sitka has just over $9 million in hand for the project, from the sale of the former Sitka Community Hospital building, and a $1 million grant from the Denali Commission. This amount will buy a very basic facility, including a travelift and washdown pads, but it will take roughly $6 million more to add features like an expanded boatyard, restrooms and office space.
With such a tight budget, rising costs are a worry. Harmon told the board that bringing in a contractor at the design stage – technically called a Construction Manager at Risk – means that the CMAR will bear significant responsibility for holding the line on expenses.
“These contracts are set up so the construction is on actual costs,” said Harmon. “They have to prove up on their actual costs: All their receipts, their time, their labor, and then they get their markup on top of that. And then the third component that we locked in, and Sitka is kind of unique in this because we’re trying to lock in as much as we can on these upfront, is we listed out a whole bunch of general conditions like mobilizing your equipment here, getting office space for your crew – you had a whole list of general conditions that they locked in now, and they cannot change that either.”
Harmon said the variables at this point boiled down to materials and subcontractors.
A consistent concern of the industrial park board is the absence of electrical service to the boatyard work areas. With no wiggle room in the main funding package, park director Garry White said he’s looking at doing it as a side project.
“We’ve heard from this board that’s an important thing,” he said, “and we really want to figure out how we can separate this project from that project. Because if we ended up going for something that’s going to fit the waterfront, that could tie in NEPA and all kinds of other federal environmental stuff that would potentially drag out the waterfront development.”
NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires an environmental assessment of federally-funded projects. Consequently, White sought the board’s approval to apply for non-federal funding to pay for electrical service.
Actual construction of the boatyard and haulout is scheduled to begin this coming October, with final completion in March, 2025.
