U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski called Haines Borough Mayor Douglas Olerud on Tuesday with some long and eagerly awaited news: The borough has been awarded a $20 million federal grant to revitalize Lutak Dock.
“I’m ecstatic. This is huge for Haines,” Olerud said. “We’ve been working on this for a long time.”
The grant, which is from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program, will cover almost all of the design and construction needed to make the dock, which is in dire straits, operational again.
Olerud said Haines has been applying for a RAISE grant to fund Lutak Dock repair for the last five or six years. In 2014, engineering firm PND conducted an in-depth study on the dock and found the facility had outlived its credible service life, said borough harbormaster Shawn Bell. The dock face closed in 2020 after Alaska Marine Lines (AML) completed construction of a new freight ramp to keep Haines’ supply chain intact.
“A lot of people have been telling us to drop it because they didn’t think we would get funding,” Olerud said. Securing the grant “speaks not only to the job that the Haines Borough staff has done…but also at a national level (the federal government’s) recognizing the importance of the project.”
The $20 million will cover phase one and most of phase two of a four-phased dock reconstruction project. The borough assembly in June approved a plan to seek funding for the first two phases, after the borough struggled for years to obtain funding for a complete renovation, estimated at about $40 million.
The first two phases involve design and prep work, filling in tidelands next to the existing dock to create more space, demolishing the old dock face and constructing a bulkhead. Bell said the first two phases address the dock’s critical needs and that completion of phase two would ensure the dock’s stability and functionality. “It solves the immediate problem that we’ve been in for a number of years, which is the failure of the dock face,” Bell said. “I’m really excited. It’s somewhat unexpected. And it’s a great opportunity for Haines.”
Olerud said about $3 million in addition to the RAISE grant will be needed to complete phase two. “There are a lot of sources out there for that other $3 million. We’re in really good standing to get Lutak Dock up and running.”
A 2021 Haines Chamber of Commerce survey found that 79% of Chamber members viewed the Lutak Dock as a focal point of the Chamber’s advocacy efforts. “The business community made it very clear that repairing Lutak Dock is crucial to the growth of Haines,” wrote Chamber director Tracey Harmon in an email to the CVN.
The federal RAISE grant program receives hundreds of applications each year and has awarded $3.4 billion to 299 rural projects since 2009.
Olerud said the dock project’s next steps include reviewing details of the grant and putting out a bid request for construction. A timeline on design and construction is being devised.