Sitka to sell several properties to Silver Bay Seafoods

Selling off the park is within the GPIP board’s mission: “Unlike other property owned by the municipality, the former Alaska Pulp Corporation mill site was acquired not for governmental purposes from the state or federal government, but for economic development and disposal.” (GPIP photo)
Selling off the park is within the GPIP board’s mission: “Unlike other property owned by the
municipality, the former Alaska Pulp Corporation mill site was acquired not for governmental
purposes from the state or federal government, but for economic development and disposal.” (GPIP photo)

Sitka will sell off a significant portion of its land at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. The Assembly approved the sale at its meeting Tuesday night. It’s the first of what may be several sales at the former pulp mill site.

Most of Tuesday’s sale will go to the Sitka-based processor Silver Bay Seafoods.

This audio temporarily unavailable.

In the 15 years since Sitka took over the defunct mill site left by the Alaska Pulp Corporation, the city’s goal has been to “maximize its economic benefit” — in other words, to develop the land in a way that replaces some of the jobs lost when the pulp mill closed in the early 1990s.

That’s the mission for what’s now the Gary Paxton Industrial Park, and the discussion at Tuesday night’s meeting hinged on whether assembly members thought that selling the land is the best way to accomplish it.

For Assembly Member Aaron Swanson, it was a no-brainer.

“When the city took over the industrial park, I believe the intent was to make it so there would be economic growth,” he said. “Since that time, most of these lots that are coming up tonight have been vacant, with the exception of the last couple years during the dam expansion…I have no problem getting these properties off the city’s hands.”

But Assembly Member Tristan Guevin worried the city was in too much of a rush to sell a valuable public asset.

“We’re talking about public land,” Guevin said. “And we need to ensure that 50 years from now, there’s public access, it’s being used for the good of our community. And I don’t know that the sale of such a substantial portion of the industrial park necessarily guarantees that longterm.”

Here’s the breakdown on what the city sold:

Lot 17, which is less than half an acre on the northern edge of the park, went to Monarch Tannery for $110,000. The tannery is now housed in the park’s Administration Building, and wants to expand.

The rest of Tuesday night’s sale went to Silver Bay Seafoods. That includes Lot 11, which is the former waste water treatment plant next to to Silver Bay’s current processing building. Silver Bay hopes to use Lot 11 as a fish oil plant, to turn fish waste into the kind of omega-3 capsules found on pharmacy shelves.

The sale also includes Lots 12A and 13, about three and a half acres in the center of the industrial park, next to the TAB bottling plant. Silver Bay wants to use that space as cold storage and, eventually, some kind of canning or packaging site for a line of retail fish products.

Silver Bay is also seeking much of the park’s remaining waterfront to build a marine services center. That’s wasn’t on the agenda Tuesday night, though it was very much on peoples’ minds.

The Assembly voted for the Monarch Tannery sale 5 to 1, and for the Silver Bay Sale 6 to 1 — assembly member Michelle Putz was absent for the first vote. In both cases, Guevin was the lone ‘no’ vote.

During public comment, a parade of Silver Bay supporters stepped up to the mic to support the company.

Andrea Thomas: Hello, my name is Andrea Thomas, and I’m speaking in support of this…

Jim Seeland: Just a couple of things in support of Silver Bay Seafoods as an entity, and what a great community partner they are…

Cory Baggen: I want to come to you guys tonight and let you know that we are very supportive of this deal with Silver Bay Seafoods…

Bryan Howie: These guys know how to build. They know what they’re doing.

In thirty minutes of public comment, ten people spoke in favor of the sale, while four asked the Assembly to hold off.

Sitka resident Jeff Farvour reminded assembly members that the city received $7.5 million in state funding to build a multipurpose dock at the industrial park, and urged them to wait until after they’ve decided the placement and purpose of that dock before selling any more of the surrounding uplands. “I think you might have the cart ahead of the horse on this one,” he said.

In the end, the Assembly did vote to pull one lot, 9c, from the  sale, out of concerns that it might interfere with the dock.

Silver Bay President Troy Denkinger spoke last during public comment, laying out his vision for the company.

“For us fishermen, it’s kind of finishing our dream,” he said. “Being vertically integrated and getting products to the shelf with our name on them. We don’t do that today. We provide a commodity, [a] high volume, block product, and we sell to other businesses that turn it into that final product, put their name on it. Our vision is, we want to have our name on those products, and we want to produce those products, we want to start by trying to produce those here in Sitka.”

Deputy Mayor Matt Hunter said he found that vision convincing.

“We have an economic powerhouse that’s ready to grow,” he said.  “We owe it to them as Sitkans. They’ve been dedicated to us, [and] I’m ready to let them grow.”

Mayor Mim McConnell said her only reservation was that the sale didn’t include any benchmarks to ensure that Silver Bay actually does what they say they’ll do, “so that the public knows that their interests is being protected and these benchmarks are being reached and jobs are being created and there’s a solid plan.”

Guevin said the lack of benchmarks was a red flag.

“I don’t feel that we have gone through our due diligence as a city govenment,” he said.

Indeed, there was some confusion over what, exactly, was being sold Tuesday night, and for how much. At different points, McConnell and assembly member Michelle Putz had to be corrected about which plots were actually up for sale. Guevin referred to a $1.4-million price tag, while Steven Eisenbeisz said it was “just over $640,000.”

In fact , the Silver Bay sale totalled about $960,000.

But after more than an hour of discussion on the Silver Bay proposal, McConnell spoke for most assembly members when she declared,

McConnell: I think somebody just needs to say it: fish or cut bait. [Laughter]. Any other comments?

Eisenbeisz: Let’s go fishing!

And with that, another piece of the industrial park was sold

KCAW - Sitka

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