The sale of 20 borough-owned residential lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision near Shoemaker Harbor is on track for summer 2025.
The sale — half of the lots by auction and half by lottery — had been planned for this past summer, but site work pushed that back to the fall and then a nationwide shortage of electrical transformers delayed it even further.
However, the borough assembly at its Nov. 18 meeting approved a contract with a South Dakota-based company for a dozen electrical transformers for the subdivision.
The borough will later issue a separate contract for installation of the transformers, said Kate Thomas, Wrangell’s economic development director.
Assuming no further delays, the land sale should proceed next summer, she said.
“There’s certainly still a lot of excitement by people” for the opportunity to choose among the lots, she said. The parcels are about a half-acre in size each.
Starting sale prices had been estimated earlier this year at between $45,000 and $70,000, depending on parcel size, location and water view, but those numbers could change. The borough will get the lots appraised before the sale to determine their market value.
Next year’s sale will include 10 lots sold by lottery at a fixed price, and 10 sold by an online auction.
The borough received five bids to supply the transformers, ranging from $50,728 from T&R Electric, which says it is the largest supplier of rebuilt transformers in the U.S., to $110,000 from ECB Solutions, an Alabama-based supply chain and project management company.
The assembly awarded the contract to T&R Electric. The contract requires delivery by May 2025.
The borough had decided to wait until the streets and utilities are finished at the property before opening access to the land for potential buyers to evaluate which lots they may want to buy. The transformers and buried electrical lines are part of the work.
A national energy lab report in March said an “unprecedented imbalance between supply and demand” had created a significant increase in lead times for developers to find and buy distribution transformers, which are used to step down medium-level voltage to service-level voltage for end-use electrical consumption.
“Shortages have been attributed to pent-up post-pandemic demand; difficulty recruiting, training and retaining a skilled workforce; component supply chain challenges; and materials shortages,” the report said.
The borough has owned the property near 6-Mile Zimovia Highway since 1996, when the federal government transferred the acreage to the municipality. It was the site of the 1932-1975 Wrangell Institute, a Bureau of Indian Affairs Alaska Native boarding school.
The borough expects it will have spent more than $2.5 million to develop the land, paying for surveys, clearing, leveling and fill to create buildable lots, putting in streets and buried utilities. Depending on the results of a new appraisal, the borough’s residential construction fund might recover around half of the cost if all 20 lots are sold.
After the land sale, the borough estimates the residential construction fund will have a balance of just over $400,000, limiting the municipality’s ability to front the expenses of developing a second or third phase to open up more parcels at Alder Top.
The borough, however, could consider selling acreage to a private developer for the next phases, with the developer paying the costs of preparing the lots for sale.
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