By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
The Alaska Railroad is tearing down a deteriorating wharf, an 1,100 foot deep water dock, in Whittier that was originally built around 1958 as part of the military installation. The marginal wharf located near the Marine Highway Ferry terminal, was used mainly for freight; over time, the harsh Whittier weather has took its toll on the steel and concrete dock, and the railroad finally decided to tear it down this past month before Mother Nature did it for them.
“We were afraid a major storm would cause it to fall into the water, and then we’d have to get it out of the water,” said Mike Fretwell, Manager of Land Services for the Alaska Railroad. “So, we wanted to tear it down in a controlled situation…It was being used by vessels that dock, but got in such disrepair, it started to rot. It got to the point that we had to condemn it four years ago.”
The railroad doesn’t have any immediate plans to rebuild the wharf, said Fretwell, but eventually it expects to build a new wharf in three phases. The old wharf was mainly used for vessels carrying freight, but a future wharf will likely offer multi-use docks with a priority placed on freight and boat tour operators.
“The East portion of the wharf would support the barge system,” said Fretwell, “transporting freight, so one barge could pull up and unload while another one was on stand-by.”
After construction of the East dock, the next phase of construction would be the West dock, which could include some kind of docking facility for operators conducting daily boat tours, explained Fretwell, and a depot with a staging area and retail stores with a board walk and shops, as well as an information center.
“It could be a place where people can walk around before going on the tour boat and to make room for a couple more of the tour operators,” he said.
Currently the Delong dock at Smitty’s Cove on the East side of the harbor is being used by long-term day boat operators like West Tours and commercial fishermen. A new wharf could accommodate such operations, Fretwell said. A phase three dock could also be built to fill other demands like another cruise ship dock, container freight ships and possibly U. S. Navy ships but that is a much more complicated and expensive project, requiring consideration for security, restriction of uses, and evaluation of competing ports like Seward—where the railroad has already invested millions of dollars to build a cruise ship dock.
But the most immediate and important demand to be filled in port of Whittier would be for freight and tour operators, said Fretwell.
“I think in five years, we could see the two ends of the wharf built, East and West ends completed,” he said.
The cost for the first two phases would be an estimated $15 million per dock, which would be paid in part by wharfage fees and real estate leases.
The railroad owns about 200 acres of land in Whittier, including much of the waterfront property from the Ferry Terminal to the Delong Dock at Smitty’s Cove, and the RV parking area west of the Begich Towers building. The city of Whittier negotiated a deal in the early 1990s for a Master Lease to develop and manage much of the land not needed for railroad operation purposes.
The state bought the Alaska Railroad from the federal government on Jan. 5, 1985, which included approximately 36,000 acres of land.