Sitka SeaWalk Phase II Public Meeting - 11/30/22

All right, everybody, I think we're going to go ahead and get things kicked off and just kind of get the evening rolling. I am Amy Ainslie, I'm the Planning and Community Development Director for the City and Borough of Sitka. Thank you all for coming tonight to talk about the Sitka Seawalk Phase 2.

Are we recording? Okay, well, while we work on getting the slides queued up that have a little bit more information about the project team, just for a little bit of context, I'm sure most of you here in the room are familiar with the first phase of the Seawalk project, but for those of you who may not be, the Seawalk currently as constructed runs between here, Harrigan Centennial Hall, eastwards towards the National Historic Park. It's a really beautiful path that, you know, encourages, you know, multimodal transportation and a lot of, you know, great pedestrian improvement, really makes excellent space of our green space and has become a really kind of beloved community asset here. It was originally planned in 2011 and was constructed in 2013. It was envisioned that there would be future phases of the seawalk to expand both all the way to the National Historic Park.

I think one of the project team members, Chris, might be able to share some information about that phase of the project. But tonight we're focusing on the phase of the project, Phase 2, that will construct between the library and over to the O'Connell Bridge lightering dock connecting to Totem Square and the Lincoln Street area. This is a really interesting project because it really is a local, state, and federal collaboration. This is a city project that we are working with in conjunction with State DOT and as well as with federal funding, and DOT is spearheading the design and construction phase, and then the project will be turned over for ownership and maintenance to the city Borough of Sitka when it is completed. So for the project team, again, I'm Amy Ainslie.

I also am joined here tonight by Mike Schmetzer, who's in the back there, and Kelly Cropper as well. They work in engineering and they're helping with some of the project management for the city side. We also have Melissa Henshaw, who is our public and government relations director, to help kind of help with outreach and making sure that the public's informed about the project, and Michael Colliver, who's our buildings Grounds and Parks Supervisor. As this is going to be an outdoor buildings grounds asset, we want to make sure that our, our management team is also involved in the design process as well, so that has a clean handover. For the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, we have Lauren Gehring here, who is the DOT Project Manager, Kristi Gentman.

For environmental impact, as well as Katherine Erickson and Gianna Kirsch as well for cultural and historic resources there in the back.

I will now turn it over to the project team to get into the specifics of the evening and share with you the design of the project and have an opportunity for you to weigh in.

Yeah, thanks, Amy. Yeah, I'm Loren Gehring with DOT, and so, so how it works is There's a memorandum of agreement that DOT conducts, you know, the project management, design, environmental assessment, the NEPA process, the right-of-way, basically everything the project needs to get to advertising, and then also bidding it and construction. And so I'm the manager for the design group, and, and to assist in this project, we've consulted out with PN&D. And their subconsultants as well. And so I'll turn it over to Tyler Bradshaw here.

Thanks, Loren, and I'd like to welcome everybody here tonight and thank you for taking the time to come and visit with us and review this Sika Siwak project, which we're, we're pretty excited about. Keeping going with the introductions here.

Still not working, Chris. There we go. Did you do that or did I? I'm, I'm with P&D Engineers. We're the consulting team on the design of the project and the team project manager.

Some other of the design team, we've got Chris Myrtle. He's our public engagement, public involvement lead. You can thank him for putting most of this together and sending out the notifications of this. He did a great job with that. We've also got Monique Anderson.

She's your local Sitkin landscape architect. So she's on the design team doing the landscape piece of it. We've also got Mark Morris, who's not here with us tonight. He's our electrical engineer on the project because we're looking at doing some lighting with the project as well.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris to talk about a little bit of the meeting goals and the background of the project before we actually get into the design piece, which I'm going to take back over for at that point.

Great, welcome everybody. Chris Myrtle. Just a little bit of Zoom meeting protocol. If you're on Zoom, please mute yourself. We will have questions and answers at the end, so if you can hold your questions and answers to the end, that would be appreciated.

For everybody else, welcome. Thank you for coming in person. Great to be back in Sitka again. Just going over what we're going to be doing this next hour, hour and a half with you is to give you a little bit of background on the larger seawalk. This is, this is a multi-year, multi-phase project.

Projects. So we're going to give you a little bit of history about the Seawalk when it started back in 2011. We're going to share some of the preliminary design work that P&D and Dominique has done together on Phase 2. We're going to share and talk a little bit about some of the environmental impacts that we're aware of and get your input on that and answer any questions and answers. What we're really trying to do is get public comment at this point, and there's really two levels, types of public comments that we're looking for, and you'll hear these phrases differently.

First off is our scoping comments. So these scoping comments help out in the NEPA process. Because we're receiving federal funds, we have to go through the NEPA process for environmental impacts. So when we say the word scoping, we're talking about how does the project affect the environment. So you'll hear us talk about scoping occasionally.

We're also at 30— at preliminary design. So we also want to get your input on the design. You know, how are we doing? What can we do better? What do you like?

What don't you like? So really we're doing two receiving two different types of comments. They're really kind of meshed together, but we as a team need to get both scoping comments related to environmental and then design input as well. Reminder that today is not your only opportunity to provide comments. The comment period is open till the end of December, December 30th.

So let's talk about the Seawalk. So the Seawalk started way back in 2011. Monique and I were involved way, way back when. We had different roles. Monique was handling the public engagement and I was the landscape architect on the project.

We worked collaboratively together to come up with the master plan with the community. And we decided that there was going to be a Seawalk that ran from Sitka National Historical Park and the visitor center that ran all the way along here, connected over to Centennial Harrigan, and then connected into the lightering dock. It was way back in 2011.

The Big Community, because this was a community-driven project, the priorities were to become a community destination and a waterfront showcase. It was designed not just for the visitors, but also for the locals as well. And really, for it to be successful, we need partnerships.

Just backing up briefly, yellow is Phase 1, that's already in. Phase 2 is this area over at— starts at the boundary of the Park Service. Many people may not realize this, but it was just designed recently and is supposed to start construction next year if funding comes through. The purple is Phase 2, the area that we're looking at now.

So a little bit of history. Monique and I and the rest of the community did a little bit of master planning in 2011, uh, figuring out where should the seawalk go, making the connections. We started doing the design and the NEPA permitting, got up to the 65% phase in 2012, which was called Phase 1. The National Park Service wasn't quite ready for the project, so they said, we want to be removed from the project. They removed themselves from the project.

That's why the seawalk stops right at the park boundary. That happened in 2012. 2013, Phase 1. Construction documents were completed and the project was built the same year in 2013. So that was Phase 1.

In 2020, uh, Corvus Design with some other firms, uh, developed the segment that's going to the Natsitka National Historical Park, a little over 800 linear feet of seawalk that's been designed. It's done, it's stamped, uh, we're just waiting for funding. But we did the design work with the National Park Service and the Denver Service Center, so that is designed and ready to go once funding's available. So that'll connect that link 8 years later. In 2021, Phase 2, this phase that we're talking about now, was initiated with MOA signed.

In 2022, we're hoping that— we know the construction documents were completed for the National Park Service segment, and we're hoping that next year that, that construction will begin. So that's kind of the background, and where are we and how do all these pieces fit together.

Tyler, your turn.

So talking about these Phase 2, which is the section that we're starting to look at now, and Chris handed it over to me as the design project manager. A little bit of background on this particular phase. They've, as Chris said, they planned this phase way back with the original seawalk documents, and then kind of with the original seawalk from going all the way from the National Historic Park all the way here to Totem Square. So we're just getting now into this section, and this particular section goes from the Sitka Public Library and Centennial Hall area here, down along the existing sidewalk here, looking at going on outside of the bridge abutment. Here's your O'Connell Bridge.

And right now, here's just an armor rock slope on the outside of the bridge. We're looking at putting the seawalk in through there and then connecting in with over here into Totem Square. A little bit of background on this particular phase.

Phase 2, this phase received Federal Lands Access Program funding in 2014, and the city and borough of Sitka accepted those funds via resolution also in 2014, being that it was consistent with numerous city planning documents. The MOA that Chris mentioned, that was the memorandum of agreement between DOT to take over the design part of the project and the construction part of the project, was signed in 2021 and allows for the use of this DOT right-of-way, which the bridge is DOT right-of-way. As is this section of Harbor Drive here, allows for the use of DOT right-of-way to build this seawalk, and City and Borough of Sitka is going to take over the maintenance of that. So that's where that agreement came into play and brought us to the preliminary design. The current plan for Phase 2 is to construct this in 3 different phases.

That's why we've got these 3 separate colors here. This phase— this is— or 3 separate sections, sorry, I don't want to confuse sections and phases for you. 3 Separate sections here. Section 1 is this section here going from the library about to where the Sitka Realty office is right about here. Beginning Section 2, the section that's going to go around the outside of the bridge abutment begins here and takes you about to the lightering facility right about where that restroom is underneath the bridge.

And then Section 3 goes from that area all the way up to this Lincoln Street intersection. And we got a couple options we're looking at, and I'll get into that in a little bit more detail later. For this Section 3 area here, the current plan is to construct this Section 2 here first.

So that is the current plan with this Phase 2 seawalk, but we're going to go through the entirety of the seawalk tonight because we're looking for comments on the entirety of the seawalk for Phase 1, 2, and 3, and then the next steps is going to be design of that Section 2.

Can you hit it for me, Chris? Every time you draw on it, it seems— So the scoping for Phase 2 has been an ongoing process starting in 2019 is when we actually started some of the scoping for this project. This was done with Western Federal Lands and the City and Borough of Sitka. They did 2 scoping reports for this project. Report 1 scoped and estimated the cost for all 3 sections and presented 3 alternatives for Section 2, which is the section that goes, if you recall, outside the outside of the bridge abutment.

They looked at 3 different options here for how to build that. The first option was this fill abutment here with an armored shoulder. They also looked at a soldier wall type section here, where they put a wall and went down into the rubble mound or into the rubble armor rock here. And they also looked at a boardwalk that went around the outside. They determined with those scoping documents back in 2019 and 2020 that the fill was the most likely, the most cost-effective, that those scoping documents also identified a funding shortfall.

And recommended additional design to understand the costs a little bit better and the impacts of the work. And so that led us to the preliminary design when I came on board here with Phase 2. And so we've gone through some preliminary design. As Chris said, we're at about 35% design right now, and we've come up with some a little bit better numbers for project funding. So I'm not going to go through this whole spreadsheet.

This will be online. For you if you want to review it. But the bottom line is, here's our current construction bid estimates right now at preliminary design, again subject to change because we're still real early in the design. We're at about $2.7 million for Section 2, $260,000 for Section 1, and $246,000 for Section 3, and a total of $3.2 million inclusive of final design and some of the construction engineering costs that we're anticipating. And again, these are rough order of magnitude numbers for preliminary design.

We get to these numbers down here, and here's the bottom line numbers, project totals that we're looking at for the various sections, $430 million, $4.6 million, $400 million or so for a total of $5.4 million for the entire projects. How are we paying for this, or how is it anticipated that this is going to be paid for? The primary funding source is the Federal Lands Access Program money. That's a federal dollars program. Uh, and also the Transportation Alternatives program is adding another contribution to that.

Currently funded at $2.7 million, that's money in the bank right now. 9% Of that is matched from both CBS and the Department of Transportation sources. The CBS portion of it is funded with the commercial passenger vehicle excise tax— tax, excuse me— dollars, which is the head tax. I don't think they call it that in Sitka, but that is what we've heard. And then, so with that funding shortfall, at this point we're seeking likely what we think is likely available money from federal sources, additional funding to complete this project.

And that's a process we're going through right now, now that we've identified some of the costs. So what does the project schedule look like? Going back The initial funding was secured in '14-'16, approved via resolution in '16. The scoping and agency agreements— that memorandum of agreement we talked about was 2018 to 2021— and those scoping documents. And here's where we are now in preliminary design and environmental permitting.

Completed the 35% design. Those are the drawings you'll see tonight on the walls in this, this presentation here. And then environmental permitting, which is another piece we're going to be talking about tonight. Is October, starting in October and going on, anticipating completion in June of 2023. Final design following this public input section here, we're looking at summer of 2023, hoping to construct, looking to bid maybe in fall of 2023 is probably the earliest, and then construct in the summer of 2024 primarily is the anticipated schedule.

That construction is Section 2. The section that we're doing first.

Okay, so when we actually get into the nuts and bolts of the design, we've got to do some preliminary work here, which we completed over the summer. Here we did the topographical and bathymetric surveys, bathymetric being this portion of the seawalk that's going to be impacted here. We also did one of the critical studies that we performed over the summer was the wind and wave analysis. Looking at how big the waves are coming primarily from this direction out here. There's a pretty large, what we call a fetch, an area where the wind can gain energy and put some waves, and some fairly significant waves can come into this area.

I think anybody that's kind of stood at that laddering facility in a storm knows that there's, there's some fairly significant wave action that can occur here. And what that wind and wave analysis allowed us to do was establish an elevation For the seawalk, we're putting it about 19 feet above the zero mark that's down here. That's, that's approximately the elevation of the parking lot there by the Realty Office. So, just to give you some perspective there, it also told us that we needed some really large armor rock to protect that slope. We also were able to look at various slopes of the armor rock to kind of minimize the footprint without having to, to.

Push the, uh, to push the elevations up too high because what we're looking at doing.

Is with varying slopes, your elevation is going to vary because the waves will run up on top of that seawalk. So that's what we're looking at when we do those wind and waves analysis, because we don't want somebody getting inundated with wave action. And so there's some playing we can do with the slopes versus the elevation to kind of determine where's the best spot to keep that elevation. So that's what that wind and wave analysis gave us. And we put the slope— established a slope to minimize the footprint because we didn't lose anything elevation-wise when we minimized our slope.

So we're going to minimize our slope. When I say minimize, it's going to be the steepest slope we can in order to minimize that footprint that's going out into that, that subtidal area there.

Okay, so here's kind of where we start getting into what it looks like today. This is a preliminary design document.

We have these posted around the room and we can go through them with you, so we're not anticipating you'd be able to read this, but I'm going to give you the highlights here of what we got here. This is Section 1. To give you some background here, we got the public library here. Maxudoff Street is coming up here on here and across this way here. And this is Harbor Drive along here.

So this is Section 1 of the seawalk that ties into the library. And goes about to this parking area here. It's going to replace the concrete sidewalks that are along Harbor Drive with the 8-foot seawalk that you see. The section we're looking at right here is typical of the rest of the seawalk that we've got along all the way from, from the National Historic Park, or about to be the National Historic Park, onto the public library. Here is an 8-foot-wide seawalk.

The pavers that you see throughout the rest of the seawalk, we've got some feedback primarily from the maintenance department that we're having some problems with those, so we're looking at replacing those with just a colored concrete band. That's an item we would like some feedback on from the public, so feel free to comment on that piece in addition to anything else you'd like to comment on. Another key point here with this with this Section 1 is we're relocating this crosswalk at Smacksudoff Street. It's currently here where we're showing it here. We're looking at moving it to this side.

And that was based on some feedback from, from some local folks and from the city and DOT as far as a safety concern. We think this is a better location for this crosswalk. One of the concerns that folks are going to have with this section of the seawalk is we're pushing this to— in order to get the 8-foot width that we want for the seawalk, it's actually making the sidewalk through this area a little bit wider. It's about 5 feet right now. We're pushing it out to 8 feet.

Then this area here in front of the Public Law Library, that's not a problem. We've got some room to push it back, but out in here, so we're not impacting private property, and there's actually some buildings right along the right-of-way here. We're pushing the seawalk out into the road, and what that does is it decreases the width of the shoulder that's along Harbor Drive there. So we're going down from 8 feet or 9 feet, I think is what we've got that right there now, down to about 6 feet. So there's still room for a shoulder and potentially some bicycle traffic if you're going through there, but there's not room— what there's not room for is on-street parking.

So through this stretch For— from the Sitka Public Library over here to the bridge, there's 12 parking spaces along that side of the street currently. We are losing 4 of them with this design is what we're looking at. 4 Spaces right in this area where it kind of goes out into the roadway here. So that's something we're looking for a little bit of feedback on, and we're pointing out here as we're looking at Section 1. So right through this area, there's 4 on-street parking spaces that are lost.

There's a lot of driveways through here, so it's not as bad as it could have been there. So there's Maxudoff Street coming through there. There's a parking lot entrance through here to the library parking lot, and there's another parking lot entrance here. So that was not parking that we were counting, but there is 4 spaces lost.

That's Section 1, future constructed section. Section 2 here, this is the one that goes around the outside of the bridge, the one that we're looking at constructing first. So this is a seawalk here, and we're going to go into a little bit of the design elements in some later slides. This is kind of an overview here, so you get a little bit better picture of what this actually looks like in some later slides here. But just to give you an overview, we've got the seawalk going along the outside of the existing bridge abutment.

This is the bridge, this is Harbor Drive here. The bridge actually goes up over this way just to give you a view of where we're at here. And this is under the bridge. This is the satellite dish that's down there. And this right here is that restroom.

So we're looking at going outside, kind of right here is where the parking lot to Sitka Realty is. And so we're swooping down here and then going on the outside of the bridge and around the corner to the lightering facility that's right over here.

We've got another 8-foot seawalk section for the majority of it. We've also got some overlooks and viewing areas with some bench seating over here. There's 4 of those, 3, 3 along the main section of the walk here, and then this one big one that's kind of right there as you enter the seawalk. Right there.

We're looking at adding pedestrian safety and security lighting. We got some feedback early in this project. There was a real concern. Uh, with this section, um, being kind of isolated from, you know, the roadway and visibility from town. And so we really wanted to have enough lighting down here that people felt safe on that walk.

So we're looking at adding some pedestrian lighting along this section of the walk. It's going to be low glare, uh, high or low glare, um, dark skies compliant lighting that goes through here and. And is actually going to be less glare than, than we think is going to be less glare than what you're seeing from the bridge right now in terms of comparative lighting levels there, but it is going to give enough lighting to light up the seawalk. It's not going to cast a whole lot back here. That's the intent of that anyway.

No problem.

Okay. Okay, and so, and then this area through here is going to have a landscaped boulder edge. It's about 7.5 feet that we're building out over the shoulder for this thick armor rock section that we've got here. It's going to be some boulders. That assist with some of potential salt spray from the wave if someone is out there during a storm event, and also keeps things nice and secure along the edge of the path there.

So that's what we're looking at with Section 2.

Section 3, another future section here that connects the seawalk from the lightering facility up through into the Lincoln Street intersection. Is going to be the concrete sidewalk that's currently there. We're looking at replacing it with the seawalk, which is the colored section, a similar section to Section— a similar typical section to Section 1, where we've got the colored concrete band on the 8-foot-wide seawalk that we're putting in there.

We're looking for some feedback here. Currently, the plan and the scoping documents plan that they did in '19 and '20 has this path going through here and out in front of this parking area around the lightering facility here, and then connecting into the Lincoln Street intersection like this. As I understand it, the city and borough is going through a little bit of a planning with this Lincoln Street area. And then there's also been some changes since the planning documents were done in terms of how you guys are handling traffic in here. I understand you closed down Lincoln Street, uh, during heavy cruise ship traffic.

And so right now the plan is to just in this seawalk here and allow for some future planning. This phase is actually going to be future as well. So there's some room for some public input and comment on how we finish this thing. So we're looking for some feedback on what do you think this area should look like here on this intersection? And then also, we're looking at an alternate route for the Section 3 that goes out and utilizes where this existing sidewalk is around the outside of the parking area, the lighting for— lighter facility.

So we're looking at an alternate route, potentially going and connecting here and going around in lieu of this one that goes up Long Harbor Way right there.

So, if you like what is shown on the, on the paper here, where we're going this way, let us know if you think this one looks a little bit nicer and utilizes a little bit more of the actual shoreline there, then please let us know that as well. So we're looking for some feedback. These 2 areas. Are a little bit in flux in terms of what you're doing with the cruise ship traffic and Lincoln Street area. And so we've got some time, we've got some room to take some feedback on those and potentially address any changes in the design in the future as well.

So this is future phases. That's Section 3.

So these are some of those design elements. Sorry.

Most likely one or the other. We're looking for some feedback on it. The phasing documents, or the scoping documents they did in '19-'20, had some feedback that says, no, let's get them to Lincoln Street as quickly as we can. And that's where it went. Again, there was— there's been some changes with the use of the lightering facility and the use of Lincoln Street that they weren't anticipating, so we're looking for some additional feedback.

It'll probably be an either/or. We're looking for some, some support for one or the other.

So here's some of those design elements that I was talking about. We get into kind of the details of what these are actually going to look like. Seen this one already a couple times. This is Section 1 and Section 3. This is a section view right here of Section 2.

And so you kind of— this is a really good illustration because it's showing exactly what we're trying to do here in minimizing this footprint out into this eelgrass area, this intertidal area out here. So we're, we're trying to push this out and then kind of try and minimize where this toe gets. So you can kind of see where the edge of the toe is. This is one cut section, so it varies along the length of the seawalk, but we're looking at trying to keep this toe as close as we can to the existing toe while also giving the space up here that we need to build the seawalk on, while also giving enough room for this thick section of armor, which is a 7.5-foot-thick section of armor rock that we need for this to dissipate the wave energy that's coming at this place. So we're looking at a 19-foot elevation for the shoulder here with the 8-foot sea walk on it.

Here's our low glare path lighting that we're looking at putting on it and showing some boulders and some landscaping along the outside of that edge.

Here's a good illustration that we've got of what the seawalk's actually going to look like. So this area here is one of our overlook areas. Something kind of neat to note here in We're getting away from the pavers, but we're going to try and integrate that basket weave pattern, that high tide pattern into the seawalk in this overlook wall here. So we still keep some of that look and feel that we had of the original seawalk. So we're looking at putting that in this, in this overlook wall here and along each one of those walls.

So here's your boulder eddies, that's these here, and then your slope down to your sea is down in this direction. And then this is actually a slope up to the bridge up here. There's O'Connell Bridge there, and here's just a sample of what the lighting is potentially going to look like, most likely more of a mast arm type coming out over the, the seawalk there.

Okay, so with this process, we've got an environmental process that we need to go through, primarily concerned with the, the Section 2 area where we're looking at going into the inner tidal fill. This is a little— this slide is a summary of the environmental process that we're looking at doing. We're looking at a categorical exclusion as part of the NEPA documentation. That's primarily due to it being primarily within right-of-way, both DOT and City and Borough of Sitka-owned areas. We have to go through a National Marine Fisheries Endangered Species Act consultation, make sure we're not impacting humpback whales and stellar sea lions.

We also need to go through an essential fish habitat consultation for the intertidal fill area, being concerned with the eelgrass that's down here on this intertidal area here. So we're getting some feedback from the public for that process and consulting with the appropriate agencies, National Marine Fisheries and Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The eelgrass, with that, we did an eelgrass survey to determine the limits. That's what you saw in the drawings a little bit further back, and I'll go into a little bit more detail on the next slide there. We conducted an eelgrass survey in August of 2022 to determine the limits and what we were seeing there.

We're anticipating a no-in-water work window with this project, so we're not impacting the herring spawning season when we actually go to construct this project from March to April. In addition, another part of the NEPA process is reviewing the historical properties in and around this area, and that's a Section 106, what we call a Section 106 consultation to ensure we're not impacting any historical properties. Through that. With all that, we try and get to this categorical exclusion to complete our NEPA process. We're anticipating a USACE, that's Army Corps of Engineers permit, for the intertidal fill, and we're looking to be completed with all this environmental documentation in the spring of 2023, and that's really when we move forward with the final design based on all the, the feedback from the environmental review and the public.

Feedback as well.

This is looking at a little bit closer view of the eelgrass impacts that I know some folks are going to be concerned about. This eelgrass bed out here is shown in green, approximately 41,000 square feet with the eelgrass is what they found in their survey. We're impacting approximately 2,200 square feet is what we anticipate there. So right around 5%.

Some other lines to note here is here's your existing toe slope, this red line kind of in the background here.

And then here's our new toe slope. So we're trying to keep that as close as possible to minimize the impacts here.

So here's some items that we thought we'd bring up for discussion, looking for some comments on, or just to make folks aware of some of the impacts that we're going to be seeing from this project. We already kind of chatted about the 4 on-street parking spaces we're looking at losing along Harbor Drive. We're adding the lighting for the safety and security purposes along that section too. They're going to be dark skies compliant low glare fixtures, as I already said. We're not going to do the high tide line paver pattern, or at least that's the current plan.

Within the actual sidewalk like you see along the existing seawalk along Crescent Harbor there and the Science Center out there. We're looking at doing instead just a colored concrete band, potentially stamped. Right now the design just has a dark colored concrete band inset into this tan colored concrete that the rest of the seawalk is.

Fill will be placed as part of Section 2 and it will impact that eelgrass. We're going to minimize those impacts and we'll also need to go go through a mitigation process with that to determine how we actually mitigate those impacts. Um, please give us some feedback on those alternative Section 3 routes that, that we talked about, or that I showed you on Section 3 at the Lincoln Street intersection and around that lightering facility. Uh, the Section 2, uh, the scoping document that we did, or that was done in '19 and '20 as a cost savings measure, looked at potentially using asphalt pathway in lieu of the concrete sidewalk pathway. We don't have that in the preliminary design, but it's something that could come back up if, if costs are such that we need to look at it again.

So if we could have some feedback on that, if you'd like to see asphalt path out there as a cost savings measure, that's something that we're looking at doing. It's going to be funding dependent.

Next steps. Chris, you want to take back over here? I've gotten through the design. Keep rolling with it. Some of the, some of the next steps we're looking at for the, for the process here, the comment period, as we pointed out, is open for this part of the process through December 30th.

That's a 30-day comment period from today. We, we would love for you guys to put the comments online. We've put the QR codes, what we call QR codes, around. You can scan those with your phone and it leads you right to a Dropbox where you just, it's just a There's no questions you gotta answer, it's just let us know what you think. So we'd love— that's where we're trying to get folks to put their comments on.

There's also a link on the city website if you're not— don't want to use a computer. We got comment cards all around the room that you can write it on. You can hand them in tonight, or you can take them home and think about it. They've got a mailing address on them so you can send them in later. So we're looking for your feedback in any way possible.

After that comment period, we're looking at moving on to the design process. 75%, We're looking at maybe spring, summer 2023, there'll be another public meeting for that Section 2, where it'll be a design check-in, say, here's what we're doing, here's where we're at, here's how we addressed any comments we received from you guys. The NEPA process that I talked about, we're looking at being complete in the spring/summer 2023, looking at securing that additional funding I talked about to complete that Section 2, or additional sections if possible. Over this summer as well, and then Section 2 out to bid late summer, uh, into the fall, and then constructing Section 2 in 2024.

And then following that, looking way out into the future, secure funding for Sections 1 and 3, and then design and build. Updates and notifications will be put on the CBS website. That's where everything is housed.

Okay.

I'll let Chris take back over. Great.

So thanks everyone for coming. Your, your time really is valuable. Your input's really valuable. You're, you're the locals that are going to use this, and we've seen from previous seawalk the amount of use that the, the facility gets from the locals is, you know, I think far surpasses what a lot of people thought when we first designed Phase 1. It's truly not just for the visitors, it really is for the locals.

So really just want to echo that we appreciate your time and your effort and your insight. You're all community members, you know the area, you know how you use the waterfront. So we're really looking forward to, and we really want to get your input. As we talked about, we've got scoping related to environmental, so by all means, please let us know about that. And then if you've got ideas on designs, things that you'd like to improve, Tyler's brought up about 6, brought up 6 different talking points that we definitely like you to address if you have a concern.

Just wanted to reiterate that comment period is open till December 30th. Our preference as a team is that you do scan the QR code or go through the city website and submit it digitally. Makes our lives a lot easier. We don't have to read your handwriting. It makes it easier for us to clearly understand what you're saying and to compile the comments.

So our preference is that, but we understand not everybody is technologically savvy. Maybe needs a little bit of time. But as I said, this period is open till the end of December. So there's plenty of opportunity if you want to submit your input digitally. That would be our preference.

We do also have— and you can go around and there is the QR codes around there, just zap it with your phone and it'll take you straight to the comments. As Tyler said, it's just who are you? Do you want to be contacted? Give us some contact information. It's just open-ended.

Say whatever you want to say. There's no specific questions. The other thing, as Tyler mentioned, is that we do have a sheet If you don't necessarily want to and you want to sit in the corner and scribble your ideas on the back of this and leave it at the front sign-in table, that's also excellent. We'll take that. Please print legibly.

It really helps us. If you want to take it home and think about it, talk with other family members, you can fold it in half. Got an address to DOT. You do have to put a stamp on it, so that's the only thing. So please, by all means, if those are 3 different ways you can do it, you can also send an email.

To Loren here. His email address is coming up on the next one, but that's one way you can get ahold of him.

Oops, sorry, I jumped ahead there. So his, his email is at the very bottom there, [email protected]. There's the City of Sitka website. It's easy, just go to City Sitka website and it'll say Sitka SeaWalk Phase 2, so you can navigate to that pretty easily. So what we're asking to, and we've shown you a lot of drawings up here, they're pretty detailed.

That are really hard to show in any presentation. So what we're going to ask you to do is just spend some time. We're going to be here till at least 8 o'clock or until you're ready to leave, but we're going to go stand by these different drawings. Feel free to ask us questions, get close and personal with them. We also have sticky notes if you want to put some sticky notes and say, I like this, I don't like this, hey, save this tree.

You can put those notes on a sticky note. Please use a Sharpie so we can read it and again, print legibly. And you can just put those notes upright onto the drawings. Please don't draw on the drawings because the markers will go through and then we'll get in a lot of trouble for coloring on the walls here. But at the same time, if you think of anything, just zap the QR code and you can just put it straight into your phone or grab a comment sheet and leave it in front.

So we're going to be here for a while, but before we jump out and release you to the crowds and look at the different drawings, do you have any questions? Way off in the back. One behind you. Yep. And can you, can you come up and use the microphone for the people on Zoom?

Do not.

My question is, was these informational flyers sent out to everyone in Sitka or just to the ones that were thought to be immediately affected? The ones that were sent out just last week, yeah, those are to the immediate people along the seawalk. Okay, well, my father didn't get one and this will affect him. My sister didn't get one and it will affect him because of the parking issues we already have trying to get into, come visit me. My road doesn't have any extra parking to speak of whatsoever.

And I've already been having nightmares. Now I'm having a double nightmare because they're going to double the number of tourists that are coming in next year. And I think it's also going to, if you put the walkway on the perimeter of the bridge, I think it will devalue my home quite considerably because I already have enough problems with tourist stuff without having them all be able to look into my living room every single day. And I've had them walk out on my deck even though I have a gate. My neighbors have had the same problem.

So I'm just saying is that this isn't entirely— I think that if you just put it across the street and went across and join the bridge because we don't know actually how long we're going to have those letter docks even being active. I'd rather see the money spent to put another cruise ship dock out at the Sawmill Cove location and then have people come in from both directions. But, you know, it'd be breaking it down. But I didn't see that many boats there at that letter dock this last year, and I can see it. Sure.

So I'm just saying that the traffic is minimal for what you want to do and what you want to do it. Sure. So just backing up and trying to answer some of your questions. Sorry if we didn't get a mailer out to everybody, but because the comment period is open till the end of December, we're hoping that you can get the word out and spread it to your friends and family members that don't know about this. You know, this is not your only opportunity to provide comments.

And again, we've given you lots of different ways to do it. In terms of your concerns about the alignment, please, please write those those down. We need to hear that. So please write it down, submit it. We need to hear your input and what your desires are.

Did that answer all your questions? Okay. Up front? Yeah, come on up. Thank you.

This is kind of a technical question, and that is, will those slides be accessible online? Yes. These slides? Yes, they will indeed. A lot of information on there.

Great. Thanks, Zach. Yep. All this will be posted on the website. This— the live meeting will be posted.

All this information will be posted. It's already pretty well populated. There's a lot of stuff already up there if you haven't been on the website yet. Any other questions?

Okay, so we are going to close out the Zoom meeting because this isn't very engaging for people on Zoom meetings to see people going to different stations. But if you want to get up and we're going to send the team out to the drawings. And please feel free to ask us questions, but the most important thing is if it wasn't written down, it wasn't said. That's kind of one of our philosophies. It's great for you to tell us stuff, you've got to write it down, okay?

Because it does become part of the public record for the NEPA information, and we can't necessarily interpolate or translate what you say exactly right. So please write down any of your thoughts and concerns. We're happy to talk to you so that you can understand before you make those comments, but please write things down and submit them. So thank you everybody for coming.