Homer Spit seafood plant lease passes to Silver Bay at unchanged $69,877 rent

Silver Bay Seafoods now holds the ground lease on the Homer Spit processing site, and the rent the city collects does not change.

The Homer City Council approved the assignment on consent this month, without discussion. It also signed off, after the fact, on Silver Bay's purchase last year of Icicle Seafoods' half interest in OBI Seafoods, a change of control the lease required the council to approve.

The terms carry over intact. The 20-year lease on about 129,000 square feet of Spit frontage runs through 2036, with options for two five-year extensions, at a base rent near $69,900 a year. That is the same figure the city listed when the lease last changed hands in 2020.

The site has had three operators in under a decade: Icicle Seafoods from 2017, OBI Seafoods from 2020, and now Silver Bay, which owns and operates plants in Homer, Seward, Cordova and Valdez and runs separate Alaska companies for False Pass, Kodiak, Metlakatla, Naknek and Southeast.

The North Pacific Fisheries Association, which represents about 75 Homer fishing operations, wrote in support. It was the only public comment.

The city's records do not say what Silver Bay plans for staffing or operations at the Homer plant.