The Bay Company’s requests for the City and Borough of Wrangell to vacate and sell portions of an adjacent alleyway have finally cleared their first hurdle, being approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission after considerable discussion at its Jan. 8 meeting.
Bay Company’s manager, David Powell, filed the request on behalf of his employers, to vacate the remainder of an alleyway adjacent to lots A and C of the Bay Company replat. The request would also allow the Bay Company to purchase portions of lots 1 and 2, Block B, of the Sortyard Subdivision, zoned Waterfront Development.
A decision on the requests has been postponed at previous meetings since last September while commissioners gathered information on the probable outcomes.
Powell explained his company wants to resurface the alley and yard in order to make better storage use of it. “This is an eyesore,” he exclaimed. Pocked and uneven, he wants to level off and fill the area. However, sections of the property currently belong to the Borough, and the alleyway has a right-of-way platted.
“I want to use it, I want to fill it, I want to make it look right,” he told them. “I can’t see me doing all this without owning the property.”
The property cannot be built up due to a parallel-running utility easement, but it can be improved. The company would fence off its back lot, eventually adding a gated access and extending its building by about ten feet where it can.
Economic development director Carol Rushmore explained her position to the zoning commission.
“The two options I have there is you vacate the rest of the alleyway,” she said, or “you would shift it over but you would pivot it.” This latter option would keep the alley parallel with the boatyard’s existing fence line.
“I just don’t see the point to have an alleyway easement through there,” Powell said.
Rushmore explained the alley was one of two platted access ways to The Marine Service Center, as the gated entrance on Front Street is currently unplatted.
“Why don’t we plat the gates that are there?” asked Wrangell’s harbormaster, Greg Meissner. “We need access to function, too.”
Rushmore responded that her concern is keeping the Borough’s development options open in the unforeseeable future.
“A right-of-way is much stronger than an easement,” she said, and it would be difficult to regain in thirty or forty years, for instance, if the boatyard were to fail.
“I can’t see that going away,” said commissioner Don McConachie. He recommended they vacate the alleyway.
“‘Forty years from now’ is trying to move forward while stepping on our own foot,” opined commissioner Rudy Briskar.
After being walked through the details by Rushmore, commissioners amended and approved the motion, adding a utility easement following along the fence line that will largely extend fifteen feet from the center pole-line running parallel to it. The alley would effectively remain where it is, but would be for utility access only, allowing Bay Company to fence off its lot.
“What happens now is this is your recommendation for the Assembly,” Rushmore told them. The Assembly will next have to decide whether to approve the recommendation.
Another future-focused discussion will be on Silvernail Work Road, which will appear on the commission’s next agenda; Rushmore explained she needs to discuss several points with the city’s attorney.
The commission also approved the final plat review of Sea Level Subdivision II, a proposed subdivision that would create two new lots zoned Waterfront Development for the lessee, Sea Level Seafoods. The property is owned by the Borough.
Commissioners likewise approved a preliminary plat review of the Torgramsen/Prunella subdivision’s Lot A-2, creating lots A-1A, A and the remainder of A-2, zoned Single Family and Commercial.
“It looks fairly straightforward,” commission chair Terri Henson remarked.
They also approved a conditional use permit application for Arrowhead Transfer Inc. to construct a new warehouse for transshipment facilities at the Arrowhead Resubdivision II Lot 11A-1, Block 21, which is zoned Waterfront Development. In voting, commissioner Apryl Hutchinson abstained due to a conflict of interest.
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