{"id":20386,"date":"2016-06-13T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/whittier-feels-effects-of-great-pacific-seafoods-closure\/"},"modified":"2016-06-13T08:00:41","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:00:41","slug":"whittier-feels-effects-of-great-pacific-seafoods-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/whittier-feels-effects-of-great-pacific-seafoods-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"Whittier feels effects of Great Pacific Seafoods closure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WHITTIER \u2014<\/strong> The Prince William Sound community of Whittier would normally be bustling with seasonal workers, but with Great Pacific Seafoods shutting all its processing plants, the town is feeling the loss.<\/p>\n<p>In the tiny port town, which has a permanent population of 200, the more than 100 seasonal workers who came to the processing plant were vital to the economy, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hundred plus people that worked at the plant used hotels and rooms and bought liquor and bought food, services, spent money every day,\u201d said R.C. Collin, who owns the Whittier Harbor Store. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be a big bite for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Seattle-based Great Pacific filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed a number of plants late last month.<\/p>\n<p>Whittier had been a major outpost for the seafood company since the late 1980s. Many in the small town, where nearly everyone lives together in the 14-store Begich Towers condo building, said the seasonal residents were vital and that their sudden loss will have a large impact on the city.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s affected the whole town,\u201d said Bonnie Cox, bartender at the Anchor Inn, a restaurant, hotel and grocery store next door to the shuttered plant. \u201cOut of the blue they came in and said they were shutting it down, pulling everybody out. Everybody\u2019s scrambling to try and find jobs now, and there\u2019s nothing to do, because we just don\u2019t have the people coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whittier Mayor Daniel Blair said he\u2019s worried the shutdown will drive people away from the isolated community.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a little heartbroke,\u201d Blair said. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a great neighbor leave. You know, they were part of the fabric of Whittier. We\u2019re a small community. I don\u2019t want to lose anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the loss of the food processors, Great Pacific had regular contracts with tender boats based out of Whittier in the summer when they run fish and ice between the dock and fishing boats out. Robert Johnson, one of those tendermen, said he was forced to rush to find a new contract.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a rough hardship,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI mean, if I had known at Christmas, or earlier in the winter I could have went out and scored a really nice contract. But they kinda had us dangling on a string at the very last hope.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WHITTIER \u2014 The Prince William Sound community of Whittier would normally be bustling with seasonal workers, but with Great Pacific Seafoods shutting all its processing plants, the town is feeling the loss. In the tiny port town, which has a permanent population of 200, the more than 100 seasonal workers who came to the processing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20386"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}