Any port in a political storm

PALMER — There’s a ship down in Ketchikan destined for the Mat-Su, but unless the borough gets a bunch of money in short order, don’t count on riding it anytime soon.

The M/V Susitna is planned as a car-carrying ferry to shuttle people between Port MacKenzie and the Port of Anchorage. The way it’s looking now, though, the ship could probably arrive at Port MacKenzie before the borough has the ability to put cars on it and before the borough has a place to dock it on the Anchorage side. Those pieces will come later.

“I would prefer to do everything all at once, but it looks like we’re going to go piece by piece,” said port director Marc Van Dongen.

Building the ferry, it turns out, was the easy part.

Van Dongen said the borough has $6 million already in hand to go toward building a landing on the Port MacKenzie side. There’s another $1 million probably on the way courtesy of Congressman Don Young.

But that’s not all the project is going to need. The borough is seeking $12 million from the state and has put the Port MacKenzie landing on its list of priorities for this year’s legislative session in Juneau. But Van Dongen said if the borough has to it can tweak the design and bring the cost down.

“Instead of $18 million we think we can get it done for $13.5 million,” Van Dongen said of the design changes.

He said the borough’s port commission has decided it wants to take that $7 million it has in hand and get started right away. He said he thinks that’s probably enough to get the floating dock built with maybe a catwalk running there from shore.

That would give the borough a place to tie up the ferry, get a crew trained to run it, try it out in icy conditions, maybe make a few runs to Tyonek or Kenai, and let the Navy — which is building the ship as a prototype with the understanding that the borough will let it gather data — run its tests.

Having a floating dock would also give barges a place to tie up overnight without needing a person on the dock tightening and loosening the lines as the inlet’s massive tides move in and out. A tug boat company might want to tie up there or someone running some kind of pleasure cruise.

Once the floating dock is in place, the borough would look for funding to build a bridge that could handle cars while also seeking to build a landing on the Anchorage side.

That Anchorage landing has provided its share of headaches to port planners. Van Dongen said the relationship with Anchorage with regards to the ferry fell apart under then-mayor Mark Begich. Begich told the Frontiersman at the time that he believed the ferry should dock at the Port of Anchorage, probably at the same place the military loads and unloads.

The borough has disagreed, saying the only spot that really works is at the mouth of Ship Creek. Docking at the port would be exceedingly dangerous and would mix ferry passengers with industrial port activities. Begich said Anchorage had big plans for the creek and those plans didn’t include a ferry.

Probably the biggest hurdle the disintegration of that relationship threw up was that the Municipality of Anchorage backed out of plans to build the landing on its side, Van Dongen said. So it’s the borough’s responsibility on both sides of the inlet.

Lately, those frosty relations have thawed, Van Dongen said. What meetings he has had with the administration of Anchorage’s current mayor, Dan Sullivan, have been fruitful.

“Those were all good indicators that the muni will more than likely work with on this,” Van Dongen said.

But the borough is still on its own when it comes to an Anchorage landing. Van Dongen said a letter of support from Anchorage will be a great help when it comes time to submit a permit application. Van Dongen said he’s also working out differences with people who use that area of Anchorage, most notably with Cook Inlet Tug and Barge. He said the latest proposal for an Anchorage landing provides space that the tug boat and barge company can use.

Van Dongen said that, as a passenger ferry, the existing docks on the Anchorage and Mat-Su side could serve as landings if the borough wanted to do some kind of passenger-only service. The new landings only come into the picture when you talk about bringing cars back and forth.

But that’s a big component of this plan, the port director said. Van Dongen said he doesn’t think the ferry can operate economically without car service. When people don’t bring their cars with them, you start to get into things like chartering buses and renting parking lots, all of which drive costs up greatly for a service that likely won’t be nearly as popular.

“People want to take their vehicles on the ferry,” Van Dongen said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.