City seeks public input on future port facilities
Nome is inching closer to the start of long-planned construction work to expand the port. The City welcomed consultants to town last week to help gather input on new features and facilities that the community would like to see developed alongside this major federal project.
Last year, the City of Nome hired consultants to craft a strategic plan for the port’s shoreside infrastructure.
The team from PND Engineers, along with their subcontractors at Northern Economics and Corvus Design, held its first round of public meetings in Old St. Joe’s last week.
On Tuesday night, about 40 members of the community showed up to help brainstorm ideas and explain port-related needs. The next night, the consultants met with the Port Commission for a work session. On Thursday, they presented what they had collected so far.
Some residents pointed out the need for more ramps for small subsistence boats. They identified locations where they’d like to see new ramps, such as spots in the outer harbor where they’d have a longer season for accessing open water.
Others noted the need for more warehouse space and a potential emergency response building. Participants also offered prospective locations for comfort stations with facilities like bathrooms, showers and a laundromat.
One of the prospects of the expanded port is that it’s going to be able to dock 1,000-foot cruise ships. Anticipating that influx of visitors, residents suggested ways to make the port more friendly to tourists beyond bathrooms—walkways, interpretive signage, space for public parks and stalls for selling food and crafts.
Likely these kinds of features would have to be projects that the City of Nome undertakes itself. It’s already too late to incorporate new features into the design of the first phase of the port expansion, which will see the west causeway extended by over 3,400 feet during three or four construction seasons beginning in 2025. The second phase will be dredging the basin to a deeper depth.
The design phase has yet to begin for the expansion’s third phase, which will see the east breakwater demolished and replaced with a new causeway that lines up with E Street.
PND principal engineer Bryan Hudson said that even if some new elements could be incorporated into the larger federal expansion project, the City might prefer to undertake them on its own to have more control over the process. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is paying for 90 percent of the navigational features, the causeway and the dredging to a deeper depth; the City is responsible for 10 percent of those costs. All other local service facilities, like fuel, water and sewer lines, electricity and communication infrastructure, lighting will be paid for by the city as the non-federal sponsor of the project.
“It all comes down to funding,” Hudson said during the meeting with the Port Commission.
The strategic plan won’t be turned over to the City for at least several months. The consultants described this round of meetings as just the first in their information-gathering and research process, though they didn’t have any specific timelines to share on when they’ll be back.
Copies of the consultants’ presentations can be found on the City of Nome’s website, under the Port of Nome tab.