A June meeting called to address harbor project aesthetics was dominated by citizen concerns about the size of a planned parking lot and a project funding shortfall, reflecting continuing opposition to the project as its $20 million first phase is prepared for bidding.

“The input we’re looking for tonight is how we’re going to make things better aesthetically and try to answer your questions on the project going forward,” said manager Bill Seward.

But the crowd of about 40 residents – that included assembly member Tresham Gregg, planning commissioner Heather Lende, and Chamber of Commerce executive director Debra Schnabel – instead assailed the project’s major elements.

“It’s still appalling to me that we’re going to take 600 feet of road frontage and make a parking lot,” Schnabel said. “The only way I can live comfortably with the harbor (project) is for the parking lot to be reduced in size.”

Lende suggested moving some parking adjacent to the borough’s Public Safety Building or at a diagonal along Front Street to reduce the planned lot’s 4.5-acre footprint.

“This is the biggest public works project ever in this town. It should be something we’re all really proud of and everybody loves. There are a lot of concerns about what’s going to happen to the waterfront, and a plan. We don’t really have that,” Lende said, describing the project as a large parking lot that would be empty eight months a year.

Public facilities director Brad Ryan, who organized and moderated the meeting, showed examples of landscaped parking at harbors. “If you’ve been to Sitka, if you’ve been to Wrangell, (parking lots) can be park-like and they can be a place you want to go. That’s a goal I have for this project.”

Ryan said he’d inserted money in the borough budget for a conceptual design of a trail extending from Portage Cove campground to Picture Point, and that moving Lookout Park would be included. He also said Fish and Game might have funding to help move the park.

The trail and park relocation would involve five public meetings and be community-driven, he said.

Ryan said conceptual design of aesthetic improvements could be “superimposed” over the parking lot, but parks and recreation committee member George Figdor said he was concerned that would be a difficult “retrofit,” given limited space there.

The only way to integrate recreational and commercial uses of the harbor would be to incorporate them into a single design, Figdor said.

On project funding, Ryan said the total project price tag – including the dual sportboat ramp, mooring floats and a drive-down float – might cost up to $37 million, but expressed optimism future funding would be forthcoming.

“When people see this project moving forward, I anticipate we’ll find additional funding. It’s kind of funny how it coughs up. There’s federal grants. There’s a (federal) trail program. There are opportunities out there,” Ryan said.

Jim Shook said uncertainty over the source of money (about $12 million) for moorage floats and the drive-down ramp was a concern. (Ryan expressed optimism that $3.2 million for the sportboat ramp could be secured through Fish and Game and other sources.)

“We, as citizens, don’t have the option of committing ourselves this far out without knowing where that money is going to come from,” Shook said.

Ryan said large projects often are built in stages. “I don’t see that additional $12 million as something we want to immediately go out and bond for or put on the taxpayers. That’s not the way I see it.”

Ryan said spending the existing $19.5 million in funding for the first phase of the project (the sheet-metal wave barrier and expanded parking lot) and securing non-municipal funding for the $3.2 million sportboat ramp would create a “functional and workable” harbor with up to 400 feet of additional tie-up space and a fully protected fuel flot.

With the first two phases complete, the borough might just “use it as it is” and seek additional grant opportunities, Ryan said.

The drive-down float and moorage floats likely wouldn’t be funded until at least 2020, he said.

Manager Seward said the metal wave barrier “won’t be as aesthetically pleasing as the wave barrier we have out there now. But that said, I think we can implement some mitigation to make it more aesthetically pleasing on the shore side.”

Jim Szymanski was one of two commercial fishermen speaking for the project at the meeting. “Four and a half acres is a big lot, visually. It doesn’t all have to be used for a parking lot. You could have two acres of park in there. It’s a blank canvas at this stage.”

Author