Borough will auction former Byford junkyard for residential development

About 1.75 acres of a former junkyard will be put up for auction for residential development by the borough this summer.

The borough-owned lots at Mile 4 Zimovia Highway will be listed on publicsurplus.com, a privately owned online auction service that handles government property sales nationwide.

The entire 2.5-acre property was valued at $205,000, according to an April 27 appraisal report from Roger Ramsey at Ramsey Appraisal Resource, of Juneau. However, a portion was carved out to be sold to an adjoining property owner.

The appraised value will guide where the borough decides to start the bidding on the remaining 1.75 acres, Planning and Zoning Administrator Carol Rushmore said last Wednesday.

The borough took possession of the former Byford junkyard property in 2009 by foreclosure. Portions of the property had been carved off and deeded to private owners long before that.

The property was rezoned from industrial to rural residential on May 12 at a planning and zoning commission meeting.

The property is vacant, has had all of its topsoil removed and has been backfilled with rock and is ready for development, Ramsey wrote in his report.

The state spent more than $17 million cleaning up lead and other heavy metals, petroleum products and other hazardous materials from the property. The junkyard operated from the 1960s to the 1990s. The state certified the cleanup complete in 2019.

Contractors on the cleanup hauled about 30,000 tons of contaminated soil, waste and debris from the site to an approved disposal facility in the Lower 48.

Rushmore said it’s more likely the former Byford property will be sold for residential development before the former Wrangell Institute property goes up for sale. The borough is still awaiting a report from its contractor on an archeological survey of the former federally operated Native boarding school site.

The borough took over ownership of the property upland from Shoemaker Bay in 1996 and is looking to subdivide and develop the land into almost four dozen residential lots.

An Army Corps of Engineers wetlands fill permit is on hold until the site can be vetted that it’s clear of cultural artifacts or human remains.