At Nemetz Park, a couple miles away from Coast Guard Base Kodiak, 25 brand new modern-looking duplexes stand among the remnants of a construction zone.
These three to four bedroom housing units were built by Perini Management Services, a Massachusetts-based company, over the last few years to provide homes for 50 Coast Guard members and their families. Tyler Vieira is a construction project manager for the Coast Guard Facility Design and Construction Center and has been overseeing the housing expansion at Nemetz since 2023.
“We always had planned for there to be additional development on the site, so it's segmented," Vieira said.
Now Perini is building another 15 duplexes in Kodiak with a price tag of more than $70 million according to Vieira, about $10 million is going to the water storage tank replacement project on Aviation Hill while the rest goes to housing, totaling 80 new housing units for Coast Guard members and their families. Vieira said this multi-phase housing project was planned out in advance to accommodate the recently commissioned cutters and their crew members.
“And in the, pretty much the same style as our previous, so this is considered the fourth phase of a four-phase project to build enough housing for the crews," he said. "Not necessarily for the individual cruise families, but for the total plus up at Base Kodiak.”
Three brand new fast response cutters are currently based in Kodiak, although one of them is set to be homeported in Seward in the coming years.
But in the coming years, Base Kodiak is also slated to homeport two yet-to-be-built offshore patrol cutters, which come with 100 crew members each. The timeline for those vessels being built and arriving in Kodiak has been pushed back a couple years due to production delays according to Vieira.
The build-up of housing and infrastructure, which Vieira has described as a general plus-up on base, began in 2022 with money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But the largest-ever one-time federal investment in the Coast Guard, $25 billion from the One Big Beautiful Act, is helping to fund the current work. Vieira said this final phase of the housing project is being funded with the first portion of that pot.
“Our project takes a long time to get from its planning stages to out the door, to an award. So in the near future there will be more, but this is just the first of that [money]," Vieira said.
The last of the new duplexes at Nemetz are expected to be completed in 2029 according to Vieira – just in time for the arrival of two new offshore patrol cutters. Simultaneously Vieira said infrastructure in Seward will be completed in 2029 as well and one of the three fast response cutters in Kodiak will then relocate to Seward. But beyond that, Vieira said it’s likely that additional Coast Guard housing will need to be built in Kodiak.
“If we were going to bring a vessel somewhere, we're going to look at how many plus-ups, both on the crew, support side and what that would mean in a place like this, where there isn't a lot of houses available on the economy. That will typically mean we'll need to build Coast Guard owned infrastructure," he explained.
And U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska already hinted on social media last month, during his visit to Kodiak for CrabFest, that more Coast Guard assets are coming.
“Biggest Coast Guard station in America, right here in Kodiak and guess what? I’m going to be making it bigger," Sullivan said. "Announcements to come on more assets coming to this great community.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Sullivan did not respond to KMXT’s request for comment.
Meanwhile the City of Kodiak and the Kodiak Island Borough are jointly pitching Coast Guard leadership this month to homeport more vessels in Kodiak.
The federal government recently announced that two Arctic Security Cutters will be coming to Alaska but did not commit to where in the state. Those vessels will be built in Finland and are part of 11 total such vessels that will be constructed in the coming years. The first two are anticipated to be completed in 2028, potentially even before the offshore patrol cutters make it to Kodiak.
