The assembly has scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday, June 9, on two separate requests to lease borough property at the 6-Mile Mill site for a small data center and for a new barge landing and freight yard.

Mayor Patty Gilbert expects the assembly will reject the request from the data center developer and approve the application from Alaska Marine Lines.

Greensparc, the California-based company that proposed last summer to build a small-scale data center in Wrangell, encountered strong community opposition, with residents concerned about possible noise and whether the draw on the power grid would create shortages at peak-demand times and possibly drive up rates.

“I am in favor of denying that (lease application),” Mayor Patty Gilbert said Friday, May 29. “I think people will be relieved.”

She added, “I think the idea is we’re going to put it to rest” at the June 9 meeting at City Hall. The meeting will start at 6 p.m.

“This town is not super-stoked on the data center,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said at an assembly meeting in April.

This past winter, the port commission declined to support the lease. The planning and zoning commission voted 3-2 for the assembly to consider the lease, but public testimony was heavily against it.

Greensparc also is pursuing a location in Petersburg, on privately owned land at the site of the former Ocean Beauty seafood processing plant.

Gilbert said setting up shop on private land in Petersburg “probably is a better fit.”

The other request on the June 9 agenda to lease borough-owned property is from AML, which proposes to build and operate a barge ramp and freight yard at the 6-Mile Mill waterfront.

The new, privately owned operation would replace the borough-owned barge ramp next to the City Dock downtown. That ramp was shut down more than a year ago after an engineer’s inspection discovered corrosion and deformed steel and determined that the almost half-century-old steel ramp was unsafe to use.

AML applied last fall to lease a few acres of borough tidelands at the former mill site for a 120-foot-long ramp and four mooring dolphins at the northern end of the property. The company also would establish a freight yard.

The company last fall estimated the construction cost at $8 million.

The planning and zoning commission this winter unanimously endorsed the lease.

“We’re going to go for it,” Gilbert said of assembly approval of the tidelands lease.

When it was first discussed last year, several community members spoke at assembly meetings to question the increased truck traffic and costs of moving freight to and from 6-Mile instead of the downtown location.

“I think the dust will kind of settle” on those concerns, the mayor said.