The harbor expansion project’s timeline has been delayed by two months.

Haines Borough harbormaster Shawn Bell told the Port and Harbor Advisory Committee Tuesday the borough wouldn’t receive the 95-percent design by June, as had been planned. The borough will likely receive the design in mid-August, according to the new timeline.

Bell said the delay had to do with the mitigation plan and the Environmental Protection Agency taking longer than expected to sign off on the relocated sewer outflow. PND Engineers, the firm in charge of the project’s design, was subsequently forced to postpone the permitting process, he said.

“They were not able to apply for the permits until they had answers on certain things. And those were two areas they had to have answers before they could fully move forward,” Bell said.

Though Bell said the timeline changed about three weeks ago, the committee didn’t find out about it until Tuesday morning, a fact that irked committee chair Norman Hughes.

“It would be nice if we had better communication on these things,” Hughes said. “I’ve been telling people we are going to have a 95-percent design based on the old timeline, which is next week. Two months is a big difference.”

Committee member Don Turner Jr. also said he was “discouraged” by the delay. “That’s the way the process goes I guess, but I’m not real happy about all these setbacks,” Turner said.

Bell took responsibility for the lag in communication, but said there was little chance the project would have been able to start this year anyway, even if the borough had received the 95-percent design by June 1. The new timeline eliminated that slim possibility, he said.

“It’s definitely going to be a spring or summer start-up,” Bell said.

According to the new timeline, bid-ready documents for the project should be available by Sept. 25. After putting the project out to bid, the assembly would be ready to make the contract award by mid-November.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Bell also provided the committee with a PND design incorporating additional area for development of a park. The design involves constructing a 6,000-square-foot bulge out of the parking lot’s southeast corner for the park.

PND provided the design free of charge, Bell said. The alteration is only an option that PND will include in its permitting process, so it doesn’t cost the borough time and money later if they want to make the change, he said.

“This in no way makes us build this extra area out, but gives us the option to do this in the future if we want to,” he said.

PND also provided a $130,000 preliminary cost estimate for the extra park area, or “peninsula,” as committee chair Hughes started calling it. The price tag is only for “dirt work,” and doesn’t include costs of moving the existing Lookout Park structures or demolishing its present location.

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee in April expressed support for moving the park to the southeast corner of the lot, though it couldn’t take official action due to lack of a quorum.

The project’s current design has the park surrounded on three sides by a gravel parking lot.

The committee unanimously supported a motion by chair Hughes to write a letter to the borough assembly requesting it identify funding for the park’s movement that doesn’t come out of the harbor’s existing $19.5 million budget.

Hughes said the design has already suffered cuts due to the limited budget. Funding of $10 million for the installation of the drive-down dock, additional slips and completion of the uplands also is still unsecured. As a harbor user, Hughes said, he would rather see borough funds for the project spent on something other than a park.

Committee member Fred Gray expressed skepticism about the $130,000 figure, stating he thought it seemed “awful low.” “I don’t know how they can do it for that price,” he said.

Mayor Jan Hill has asked that the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, Planning Commission and Tourism Advisory Board work on a plan for Lookout Park, though the groups haven’t yet scheduled a meeting.