The owner of the former sawmill property at 6-Mile Zimovia Highway has accepted the borough’s offer of about $2.5 million to buy the 38.59 acres, which the borough sees as an economic development opportunity for the community.
Borough Manager Jeff Good declined to name the exact amount but said Friday, “we did make an offer, they accepted.”
Bennett McGrath, of Anchor Properties, in Petersburg, the representative for property owner Betty Buhler, said the borough initially offered $2.3 million and they “met in the middle” between $2.3 million and the $2.7 million asking price.
Anchor Properties on Friday declined to name the exact figure.
During the borough assembly executive session Feb. 22, in which the purchase was discussed, Good said the assembly “provided me some room to negotiate for the property.”
The property is “on a deep-water port with three existing warehouse-type buildings and one mechanic shop. Most of the land has existing concrete and a boat launch,” according to the listing.
“I would love to sell the mill as a whole to somebody, but I am also tasked with breaking it down to 23 individual lots and selling them individually,” McGrath said Feb. 21, while the borough was mulling a purchase of the entire site. Anchor Properties would have asked $549,000 for a 2.3-acre lot in a proposed subdivided development.
In making an offer, “the biggest thing is making sure it wasn’t split into a bunch of different pieces,” Good said last Wednesday. The borough sees the potential to develop the waterfront industrial-zoned property into an economic gain for the community.
“As far as what we’ll do, we’re looking at the bigger picture,” Good said. “There is an economic development plan for the mill property that was developed a while back. We'll have to dust it off, start conversations with different entities. There’s a lot of potential.”
Finance Director Mason Villarma said the borough met with the CEO of one of those entities, Sealaska Corp.’s Anthony Mallott, on Feb. 9.
Discussions, which are still in a very preliminary stage, included a potential partnership with Sealaska for the property as a deep-water port for tourism or a specialty mill for the corporation’s wood products division, said Villarma, who is a Sealaska shareholder.
Sealaska spokesperson Matt Carle said there are about 350 Sealaska shareholders in Wrangell, but the for-profit Native corporation, which has been having “productive conversations” with the borough, doesn’t have any business operations here.
“It's important for us to be aware of what’s happening in the region,” Carle said Friday. “We’ve been having community meetings with every major Southeast Alaska community — tribes, village corporations, city administrations. It’s important to see what’s happening in these communities … that is the crux behind what we’re trying to accomplish with these conversations.”
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