Port, prison, rail, ferry: Mat-Su developments across from Anchorage north shore.

• Author: Sullivan, Patty
• Position: BUILDING ALASKA: SPECIAL SECTION

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The next time you walk the coastal trail in Anchorage or visit the seaward side of downtown, look across the water, that's the Matanuska-Susitna Borough just 2.5 miles away. It's counterintuitive really. One drives 40 miles in the opposite direction out the Glenn Highway to get to the MatSu. Yet Port MacKenzie has been so close all these years and unnoticed. That is about to change for the betterment of Anchorage, the Interior and the state as a whole.

At Port MacKenzie, the timelines of significant infrastructure projects are aligning.

* A $240 million State prison, Goose Creek Correctional Center, is going up nine miles from the dock. The 430,000 square feet of buildings on a 95-acre cleared compound scheduled for completion in 2012 is the State's largest vertical-construction project. The prison will provide more than 650 construction jobs and some 375 long-term corrections jobs in the 1,536-bed facility for male inmates.

* The barge dock received $3 million in stimulus dollars to expand from eight acres to 16 acres and will be completed summer 2010, making the dock an attractive staging area.

* The ferry terminal building awaits passengers at Port Mac. The ferry M/V Susitna is now a $70 million ship, set for a champagne bottle to be cracked across its bow in a christening ceremony at the shipyard in Ketchikan later this year.

* Dirtwork has already begun on a road/rail loop near the port. Called the bimodal bulk facility, first a road for trucks will be built bound for the port to offload bulk resources, second the road will turn into an efficient rail loop, offloading bulk commodities to a conveyor system that reaches the deep draft dock.

* Some 30 miles to 43 miles of new railroad track will connect Port MacKenzie to the mainline of the Alaska Railroad in a yet-to-be-determined vicinity of Wasilla to Willow. Called the Port MacKenzie Rail Extension, the project together with the Port will deliver new jobs and new industries to the Railbelt region--Seward to Fairbanks. Independent studies show the $274 million rail spur could stimulate new mines and industrial projects and return some $6 billion in permits, fees and tax revenues to Alaska. Construction is scheduled to be completed by 2013.

RAIL EXTENSION BENEFITS

"If the rail goes in, a 1 billion ton limestone deposit up near Livengood north of Fairbanks will be more economic to develop," said John Duffy, Matanuska-Susitna Borough manager. "Once you combine the...