KABATA: Parties bridge differences

KNIK — A lawsuit hanging over the project to build a bridge from Point MacKenzie to Anchorage is no more.

According to a press release from the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, the authority and the Port of Anchorage have reached a compromise.

Essentially, the problem had been that the bridge was set to make landfall in an area the port needed.

“As the port worked through their expansion project they realized that the drydock needed more room to operate properly,” said Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman for KABATA.

So KABATA moved the bridge over in its plans to accommodate the port.

“It’s still within the right-of-way, we’ve just moved it over,” McCarthy said.

The right-of-way in question is on port land adjacent to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. KABATA Chairman Mike Foster said at a Friday press conference that part of losing that piece of right-of-way will mean there won’t be enough room there to dispose of snow removed from the bridge. It will have to be moved elsewhere.

The lawsuit was filed this summer and had been looming over the project.

“It definitely puts a chill on permitting,” McCarthy said. “I think that now that the lawsuit is being withdrawn I think that we’ll see more rapid action on our final permits.”

The accord was announced at a press conference Friday featuring Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan and bridge project officials.

“I’m a big supporter of the bridge and I want to make sure it works, and at the same time I’m a big supporter of the port and I have to make sure that it works,” Sullivan said at the conference, according to a video posted soon after to the municipality’s website.

“We reduced our right-of-way to a very narrow footprint to allow the dry berth area to work as intended,” Foster said at the same conference.

He said KABATA is in the process of acquiring right-of-way and negotiating with the Port of Anchorage for access.

Probably the next big announcement from KABATA, judging by Foster’s comments, will come near the end of the month when the authority will narrow its list of consortiums hoping to design, build, finance and operate the bridge. Foster said that narrowing will happen Oct. 21 or 22.

According to a Sept. 22 press release, KABATA received “statements of qualifications” from six consortiums, including national and international development groups. The short list will have three names on it.

The city and KABATA expect the work to officially withdraw the lawsuit won’t be fully complete until the middle of next week.

“They still need some signatures,” McCarthy said.

The bridge project has been on the state’s radar for more than a decade. KABATA was founded by an act of the state Legislature in 2003. The authority predicts the bridge will begin construction in 2013.

The project has been back in the news recently as Anchorage property owners protest moves to acquire right-of-way in the Government Hill neighborhood and the Legislature mulls whether the state should commit to cover shortfalls between $5-per-car toll revenues and developers’ costs.

KABATA has said repeatedly that shortfalls are expected in the first five years, but that the $150 million it wants to cover them will be paid back eventually and that at some point, the bridge will turn a profit.

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