The country’s largest Coast Guard base is building up its infrastructure to accommodate new vessels and more crew members coming to Kodiak within the next few years.
Lt. Commander Tyler Vieria, with the Coast Guard’s facilities design and construction center, gave KMXT an update on the ongoing construction work on Coast Guard Base Kodiak.
Earlier this month the Coast Guard put into service the second of three new fast response cutters to be homeported in Kodiak. Each one has a crew of roughly 25 onboard. Many have brought their families to town. The third one is expected to arrive and be in service before the end of this year.
Those crews, their families, plus other new personnel on base and at Air Station Kodiak, all need housing.
Vieria, who has been working in Kodiak for the last two-and-a-half years, said 25 new duplexes, or 50 units total, were completed earlier this summer. According to a Coast Guard press release, that Nemetz housing project featured 38 three-bedroom units, 12 four-bedroom units, a playground and neighborhood amenities including upgraded landscaping, roadways, sidewalks, utilities and lighting all at a cost of roughly $97 million.
“Yeah it was the general plus-up," Vieria said. "It’s not specifically if you’re on one of those boats then you’re going into that housing unit. But just in general, the need to provide additional housing for all the units stationed here in Kodiak.”
Vieria said the Coast Guard is also planning a housing expansion to build 15 additional duplexes at the same Nemetz complex in the coming years. That project could go out to bid by the spring of next year.
On top of the new crew members and families that came with the cutters, he’s estimating an additional 300 people to come to Coast Guard Base Kodiak within the next ten years.
Meanwhile, Vieria is also overseeing an expansion of dock space and a fuel pier project. He said this will create a floating pier and bigger berths to dock up to five ships at the same time: all three new fast response cutters and two larger, offshore patrol cutters, or OPCs, he expects will be built by the fall of 2027. These two larger cutters are expected to bring roughly 100 crew members each and be homeported in Kodiak. These new OPCs are slated to replace the Coast Guard’s medium endurance cutters like the Alex Haley.
“So at least the two OPCs and then the three FRCs, and then we’re always an important logistics hub," Vieria explained. "So not only just homeported vessels but future Coast Guard operations in the Arctic District.”
A new maintenance and weapons detachment building called the MAT, or maintenance augmentation team, equipped with a 3D printer, fabrication and mechanical equipment was also completed earlier this year to help service and maintain the new vessels coming to Kodiak. Vieria said the MAT building is expected to be staffed by roughly 50 service members.
Upgrades have also been made to the cutter storage warehouse on base and a new buoy yard was built as well, according to a Coast Guard press release.
