Sometime in the next few weeks, Matthew Sill of PND Engineers expects someone to look into Douglas Harbor and ask a simple question: When can I move in?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks complete, but the utilities really do take some time,\u201d he said Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The City and Borough of Juneau Docks and Harbors Department hosted a brief tour of the renovations underway at the Douglas Boat Harbor. Port Director Carl Uchytil said the work is about \u201c85 percent complete\u201d and is expected to finish before its March 31 deadline.<\/p>\n
That completion will be a big relief to the City and Borough, which has spent almost two decades researching, planning, permitting and fixing the harbor first completed in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
The new section of Douglas Harbor (A, B and C floats are being replaced; some remained untouched during the project) will include the same number of boat slips (about 120) as the old section, but it will be more durable, easier to maintain, and more friendly to harbor users, Uchytil said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had numerous floats that ran aground at low tide,\u201d Uchytil said of the old facility. \u201cIt was just time; it was well past its useful life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The beginnings of Douglas\u2019 harbor date to World War II, but it wasn\u2019t until the 1960s, after the construction of a causeway to Juneau Island, a new breakwater, and dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that the harbor came into being.<\/p>\n
The CBJ\u2019s docks and harbors department is run as an enterprise fund \u2014 it\u2019s supposed to pay for itself via user fees. In the 2000s, after years of planning, it started issuing bonds to prepare for the project. In 2008, it received a $2 million grant from the state.<\/p>\n
Construction had to wait until permitting, which didn\u2019t come until June 2014 from the Corps of Engineers.<\/p>\n
After the permit, federal funding paid for the Corps to dredge the harbor, something needed because Juneau\u2019s seabed is still rebounding after the melting of the area\u2019s glaciers.<\/p>\n
In the past 20 years, said deputy port engineer Erich Schaal, the seafloor in the harbor had risen a foot to a foot and a half, a process called \u201cisostatic rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the dredging, the ports department issue a $6 million construction contract to Trucano Construction.<\/p>\n
Doug Trucano, the owner of the firm, called the job \u201cfairly straightforward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe basically build these docks with four people,\u201d he said of the floats.<\/p>\n
That figure doesn\u2019t include electricians and plumbers from subcontractors.<\/p>\n
One headache on the project has come from two pilings that couldn\u2019t be pounded deep enough with a hammer. Trucano plans to bring in a drill to break through the clay or rock preventing the pilings from sinking deeper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be done with the main dock installation, I would say, in about a month,\u201d Trucano said, though plumbers and electricians will be working longer.<\/p>\n
One of the main differences from the old harbor and the new one is the extension of a headwall on the landward side of the harbor. That wall, backed by fill, will create additional parking in the harbor area and allow a second, improved ramp to be built to the floats. That ramp will be recycled from a renovated cruise ship dock.<\/p>\n
Schaal said the work in Douglas is \u201cwell ahead of schedule\u201d and may finish even before the March 31 contractual deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really pleased with where Trucano Construction is,\u201d Uchytil said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometime in the next few weeks, Matthew Sill of PND Engineers expects someone to look into Douglas Harbor and ask a simple question: When can I move in? \u201cIt looks complete, but the utilities really do take some time,\u201d he said Wednesday afternoon. The City and Borough of Juneau Docks and Harbors Department hosted a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":27029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27028","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\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27028"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}