A rendering of what the redesigned St. Herman Harbor will look like a little more than a year from now. On Thursday, the Kodiak City Council approved 9.8 million dollars for construction of the upland facilities, underwater piers and other associated infrastructure that will allow the 600-ton travel lift to pluck boats out of the water and operate. (Photo courtesy City of Kodiak).

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
            The Kodiak City Council has pumped another 9.8-million dollars into a large vessel travel lift and boat yard project for St. Herman harbor that’s on schedule to be complete by fall of 2009. KMXT’s Casey Kelly has more.

            (Freed 1                                              :19s                 “…project cost is 9.8 million.”)

            Pacific Pile and Marine will be building the associated infrastructure for a large vessel travel lift purchased by the city in April, and expected to arrive in Kodiak next year. The construction project will include in-water piers for the travel lift to drive on when it picks boats out of the water, a utility building, and a wash-down slab. For now it won’t include a bulkhead dock, which would allow lightering of vessels that exceed the travel lift’s 600-ton capacity. The bulkhead dock was bid as a deductive alternate for the project just in case funds weren’t available to award the base bid.

Pacific Pile and Marine’s base bid of 12.1-million dollars was about 3-and-a-half million over the engineer’s estimate. Two other companies, American Civil Constructors West Coast and Ruskin Construction, bid 12.4 and 15-million dollar respectively. Freed says a variety of factors probably contributed to the discrepancy between the bids and the estimate.

(Freed 2                                              :39s                 “…the demand that’s out there.”)

Still, the city council unanimously approved the bid award. Councilman Jack Maker said the lift would create jobs and attract boats from all over Alaska and the west coast that currently go to other ports for repairs.

(Maker 1                                            :18s                 “…you’d think would be done here.”)

Even one-time critics of the project, like Councilman Terry Haines, say it will benefit the community.

(Haines 1                                           :07s                 “…going to work out for Kodiak.”)

Construction on portions project could begin later this summer. Puglia Engineering of Tacoma, Washington has been selected to operate the travel lift, which is being built by Marine Travelift of Wisconsin.

I’m Casey Kelly.

                                                        ###