Construction looms for research center
Building contract for $51 million facility to be awarded in the spring
At least 30,000 yards of soil and tons of crumbled rock will be removed by December to make room for the $51 million marine research station at Lena Point by December.
Federal officials said Thursday that they expect to award a construction contract for the 690,000-square-foot National Marine Fisheries Service research center in the spring. They expect to open it in 2007.
The Lena Point waterfront site, a former rock quarry, will provide office space for 107 workers and replace most but not all operations at the 44-year-old Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau.
"Auke Bay has pretty much outlived its useful life," said John Gorman, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration project manager for construction at Lena Point. During a Thursday site tour for the visiting Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, Brig. Gen. John J. Kelly, Jr., Gorman said the Auke Bay lab was designed to be built in Panama City, Florida, not Alaska.
Kelly was also taken on a tour of the Auke Bay lab, where he was shown cramped office quarters and a trailer that served as a research lab.
Part of Gorman's job is to make sure the new Lena Point building will satisfy the needs of the NOAA scientists who will be working there, Gorman said.
Kelly, who was involved in the funding effort for the project in Washington said it made him feel good to see the project moving along. "It's really a lovely site. It will be nice to come back in two years," he said.
Although the Lena Point complex will increase space and improve lab and office conditions for federal employees and contractors, it will not have a dock and will not support hatchery work and the research on fresh and mixed salinity water that is done at Auke Bay, said Steve Ignell, Auke Bay Lab deputy director.
At least several employees and marine research efforts will need to remain at Auke Bay, Ignell said. As of yet, "nobody has done a head count," he said, adding that that sort of planning will be done after the project enters the construction phase.
"We're just really happy the building is underway," Ignell said.
Because of high construction bids in 2002, the project had to be radically downsized, eliminating a large auditorium planned on the right wing of the complex. The original plan cost $78 million, Gorman said.
For different reasons, downsizing is also underway for the second research facility at Lena Point - a commercial fisheries graduate research center for the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
UAF had asked the Alaska Legislature for $18 million for its Lena Point center but only received $9 million when it received its appropriation in 2002.
Presently, UAF is redesigning its project plans to build what it can now and build a second phase in the future. "We had to drop back and start over," said UAF project manager Michael Ruckhouse, who is based in Fairbanks.
UAF hopes to complete the first phase of construction in 2006.
• Elizabeth Bluemink can be reached at elizabeth.bluemink@juneauempire.com.