Homer staff asks what matters most as float project estimate tops $22 million

Homer's port director has asked the city's Port and Harbor Advisory Commission to help decide which parts of a project to replace the harbor's oldest floats matter most, after the estimated cost rose to more than $22 million from about $17 million.

The project may have to be scaled back to fit the money the city has, Port Director Bryan Hawkins wrote in a memo for the commission's Nov. 12 meeting. But most of that money comes from a federal grant, and any significant change would need the federal agency's approval for the city to keep it.

The floats, known as System 4, are mostly ones the state built in 1964 for the original Homer Harbor and handed to the city in 1999 with extensive deferred maintenance, according to the city's capital improvement plans. They serve about a third of the harbor's 2,192 vessels a year, the city says, and its plans list the Seldovia fast ferry Kachemak Explorer among the boats that load passengers and freight there.

The floats are more than 30 years past their engineered life, the plan says, and a 2022 condition survey rated them in serious and critical condition. The city's 2024 plan described a main float that lists to one side, snow that has to be cleared in winter to keep it from sinking, and stall floats that are unstable or bouncy to walk on.

The harbor already can't meet demand for moorage, the plan says, and closing even one finger of a float means boats have to raft up, move to transient moorage or, most likely, leave the harbor. Shutting down all of System 4 would affect 167 vessels. Boats in Homer already tie up as many as five deep, and work on a new $402 million harbor proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers is planned for 2030 to 2034.

After three tries, Homer won an $11.2 million grant this year from the U.S. Maritime Administration's Port Infrastructure Development Program. The capital plan also lists a $1.1 million Denali Commission grant, a $250,000 federal appropriation and city matching money. It puts the original estimate at about $17.1 million and notes that more money may be needed once design is complete.

As the city described it when the grant was awarded, the project would install 36,954 square feet of new floats that meet current safety and accessibility standards, a 100-foot covered gangway, 6,218 square feet of new transient moorage and upgraded utilities. It would also replace 102 corroded and undersized pilings and add 31 more.

The grant application argued that losing moorage would increase congestion and overcrowding across the harbor, slowing boats and making the harbor less efficient, Hawkins wrote. The project's main purpose, he wrote, is to replace the moorage "before it becomes unsafe and unusable." Any significant reduction in scope "must be approved by MARAD in order to maintain PIDP funding," he wrote.

When the city picked Turnagain Marine Construction of Anchorage last November, staff recommended a $22,459,855 contract for design and construction. The City Council awarded only the $515,000 design phase in January. Construction requires separate council approval, with the contract amount to be adjusted to fit the grant, the resolution says.

The council is set to consider a $681,217 project management contract with Moffatt & Nichol on Monday. The commission meets at 5:30 pm Nov. 12, and any recommendation it makes would go to the council as a motion.

Construction would come after final permits, the finalizing of the federal grant and delivery of materials that take a long time to get, and would happen during an off-season to limit disruption, the city has said. It hasn't given a date.