New life for Seward's Marine Industrial Center.

• Author: Erickson, Nancy
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Transportation

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It's been years in the making, but the Seward Marine Industrial Center (SMIC) is getting the long-awaited breakwater so desperately needed to compete as a deep water, ice-free, marine industrial port.

Mammoth rock trucks rumble over roads that once saw little traffic, transferring rock from the City's rock quarry to size-designated piles in preparation for placement in the new 960-foot breakwater. Hamilton Marine's dredging crews are working 24/7 to remove 115,000 cubic yards of material that will provide a new channel into the basin from the north, according to Hamilton's Project Assistant Andy Loertscher. Associated navigational aids and marker piles will also be added. Existing sewer and seafood outfalls from Polar Seafoods and Spring Creek Correctional Center will be relocated to accommodate the breakwater development.

Hamilton Marine Construction LLC began work on the Phase One $15 million project late last fall with a scheduled completion date of April 2017. The breakwater will extend from the existing cell wall on the southwest side of the basin and when completed will enclose roughly thirty-five acres of water, according to Seward Assistant City Manager Ron Long.

Phase Two of the SMIC expansion project will see development and dredging of the SMIC basin to increase moorage and wharf-age capacity, repair the damaged North Dock, and add utility and upland infrastructure.

But the bigger story is not what the breakwater is but what its completion will mean to Seward and Alaska.

According to Long, getting the breakwater in place is pivotal to developing the industrial center and a catalyst for economic growth and job stability. The few marine-related businesses that stood sentinel for years on the uplands that promised a thriving conglomeration of marine repair facilities are now being joined by other likeminded entrepreneurs as the City's lease parcels are gobbled up.

Of the initial eighty-five acres of land available for development, thirty-six acres remain for purchase or lease, according to Seward Harbormaster Norm Regis. Other parcels are leased or privately owned.

History

The City of Seward had big plans in the mid-1980s for the fifteen square mile parcel located on the Fourth of July Creek alluvial fan delta two miles across Resurrection Bay from Seward. In 1986 city voters approved a $30 million general obligation bond to purchase and construct infrastructure, of which a portion was eventually leased by Jim...