Construction Season Slow for Southeast Alaska.

In the city of Yakutat, at the northern tier of the Southeast Alaska panhandle, there's plenty of land for building. But with the economy being limited, privately owned buildings in the downtown area are in short supply.

So Yakutat city and tribal officials are arranging to have two three-story

Building activity in this northernmost Southeast community is slow for now, City Planner Paul Wescott says. But the pace may pick up with the installation of sewer and electric lines to the high lands above Yakutat's small downtown. That project is expected to yield about a dozen residential lots and a handful of commercial properties.

The town's small boat harbor is slated for expansion and a chemical storage building is to be constructed at the air port, Wescott says. But other than the above, for this season, no noteworthy con struction is expected in Yakutat.

Elsewhere in Southeast, projects especially publicly funded ones-continue at the satisfactory pace similar to recent years, say officials. But in the private sector, builders and regulators report that construction activity is in a relative lull from the frantic pace of the last few years. The exception is Sitka, where a number of residential, commercial and industrial projects are underway or planned to begin this spring and summer, alongside million of dollars in state capital improvements.

Sitka Boom

Sitka Building Official Harry Chartier thinks the present burst of construction activity may have been caused partly by Sitka investors holding back on their plans for the first few years after the Alaska Pulp Mill closed its doors in 1993.

"Industrial and commercial activity is being spawned because we have had several profitable business years in a row and are moving ahead with projects that may have been on the back burner for a while," Chartier says.

Several stores in Sitka's downtown are undergoing extensive renovations, including the doubling in size of one of Sitka's main retail plazas. Residential prices are rising, with new large homes being built on waterfront and view properties.

A main impetus toward industrial development has been millions of dollars in federal timber supply disaster funds the city has funneled into an industrial park at the old mill site.

Now named the Sawmill Cove Industrial Park, more than $3 million in construction is planned for this building season, says the Cove's Executive Director Jon Krebs.

Sawmill Cove ventures have routinely received the support of the city in loans and grants. A water-bottling firm, Sitka Beverage Corp., is erecting its building and installing machinery. A high-quality eco-tourism venture, The Boat Company, is building maintenance, warehouse and berthing facilities for its small fleet. OmegaSea, a successful manufacturer of fish food, is eyeing the site for a new plant. Shoehorned into this construction season also will be the installation of water, sewer and electrical service for the new tenants, says Krebs.

Public funding of buildings citywide is as strong as anywhere in the region with major school upgrades under way and plans to build a new solid waste handling facility among the main projects. The state is spending more than $1 million on improvements to Sitka's O'Connell Bridge.

Across the bridge on Alice Island, Sitka's Native village corporation, Shee Atika Inc., is building the first five of what will be two dozen waterfront townhouses. The planned community will be marketed to those who wish high-quality, low-maintenance housing such as retirees and those who spend only a portion of the year in Sitka.

On the other end of the economic spectrum, moderately priced family friendly housing is being built by one local contractor, while a tribal agency is developing 14 lots for subsidized homes.

Capital Ventures

About half of Southeast Alaska's residents live in greater Juneau, a critical mass big enough to attract the attention of Costco, K-Mart and Carrs Quality Center (now owned by Safeway). In the 1990s, the city of 30,000 enjoyed construction of several big box department stores and new shopping centers.

That kind of commercial building is now flat--as is the residential market in general-says Juneau contractor Don Didier, whose Silverbow Construction has done projects throughout the region for more than 30 years.

"We're not as hot as we were last year," Didier says. "But the government still has got a lot of money."

Among the projects slated for Juneau this construction season are continuing work on a $19 million assisted-living center, major renovations to Bartlett Memorial Hospital and the building of a new classroom wing at the University of Alaska Southeast. More than $1.5 million is to be spent on trails and accommodations at the popular Eagle Beach recreation site, while the first phase of multi-million dollar improvements begins on the small boat harbor in Douglas.

Other big-ticket items include redesigning roads and traffic signals to straighten out confusing and congested traffic outside Juneau's airport and improving a mile of road in an older section of Juneau near the old mining claims.

Didier says builders who specialize in different size projects may be faring differently- adding that the larger public projects are providing most of the steam in the present economy.

He says he's just happy Southeast enjoyed one of the mildest winters in memory, allowing Didier's company to catch up on work that had been back logged since busier times. Didier says his carpenters found they could work uninterrupted throughout the winter months, often without erecting the usual elaborate Visqueen sheeting.

"A typical year on our (recent) bank remodel, for instance, would have meant a lot of site protection costs," Didier says. "(This winter) we just went to work the same way we would have in April or May. It's been darn good weather."

Crossroads Communities

Cruise ship tourist-rich Skagway, like Juneau, has seen steady growth in its retail sector in the last few years, but City Manager Bob Ward reports that no new starts are expected this building season.

"This is going to a fairly subdued summer," Ward predicts.

Skagway's economy would get a huge boost should the proposed Alaska Highway route for a natural gas pipeline come to fruition. The Lynn Canal town would be one of the staging points for construction materials to be shipped to work sites in Canada. Ward says the city is beginning talks about what kind of expansion-if any-their port facility might need, especially during the summer months when the tourist and construction seasons coincide.

Construction activity in Haines, just south of Skagway, is expected to be almost exclusively residential this season, says City Administrative Assistant Scott Hansen. But that could change in the future with the building of a natural gas pipeline, he says.

Public Works

Wrangell will have some construction activity this summer with some major sewer and water projects being performed downtown. Public Works Superintendent Bob Caldwell says work also will begin this summer on building a series of treatment lagoons for the wastewater plant. Tlingit and Haida Central Council has some extensive upgrades planned for more than 30 low-income housing units.

In Petersburg, more than 100 town residents at Scow Bay will be able to get rid of their rain-catching systems and delivery trucks and enjoy city piped-in water for the first time since the area developed in the 1980s.

Southern Connection

The southern end of Southeast Alaska has been the hardest hit by cutbacks in the timber supply and that downturn has been reflected in home sales and commercial construction.

A Wal-Mart opened in Ketchikan in March, but no big new commercial projects are expected this spring or summer, says Planning Department Assistant Doris Crockett Underway this spring was a new youth detention center.

While timber-related businesses falter, city officials and local developers are eyeing Gravina Island, a short ferry ride from the city and the site of Ketchikan's airport, as a possible site of future industrial development. Residential expansion, too, would be available on Gravina Island, although at present Ketchikan-area homes put up for sale by their owners sit on the market for much longer than they have in recent years.

The building season on Prince of Wales Island is also to be slow due to the same timber downturns, says Craig's City Planner Jon Bolling. A $13 million high school was completed in the community just last year.

Road building is to be the main construction activity on the island-as projects that have gone on for years continue to receive funding.

Perhaps the biggest building Prince of Wales Island is doing is actually in Washington State, where a $12 million ferry, now under construction, is to be used to initiate daily ferry service between the island and Ketchikan when it comes on line this fall.