Cold storage plans move ahead

Mike Tozzo

January 6, 2006.

Petersburg Economic Development Coordinator, Eric Phillips, is still confident about plans for the construction of a new cold storage facility after meeting with the City Council in a work session last Friday night. “The purpose of the work session was to essentially bring everybody up to speed on the project and get some agreement on what needs to be done in the immediate future to pull the project together,” said Phillips.

Phillips said that on January 17, he will be going to the City Council to present a development plan and a construction timetable. According to Phillips the plan is still to start construction this month and finish by the end of June. “I have already sent the construction contract to the attorney and hope to have it reviewed sometime this week,” said Phillips.

Kurt Wohlhueter, Harbor Board chair at-large, reminded the public that the purpose of PEDC and the cold storage facility is to provide infrastructure and opportunity for the community. It was never the intent of PEDC to put existing operations into stress with a new cold storage facility.

“We try to come up with projects that are good for the city and promote economic development within the City of Petersburg,” said Phillips. Dennis Lewis, City Council member, said, “Some of my concerns are that I put seafood processors or seafood cold storage into the same category as mining or timber, here today gone tomorrow. I heard rumor-wise you need a primary entity to upfront this project.”

Phillips responded to the comments by saying we are not necessarily looking for a primary investor in the project but are looking for an anchor tenant to guarantee X amount of fish per year.

One of the main questions from the public about this facility is if the facility is only for cold storage and not for processing. Phillips answered this question by saying, “The facility will be used for blast freezing and cold storage and blast freezing is technically defined by the state as processing.”

Harold Medalen, Jr. asked, “Is this project really going to bring in more fish to Petersburg or is it just going to take away fish from other plants and bring it to this one?” According to Phillips, some of the frozen at sea folks have mentioned bringing their product to town and that’s product that normally would never see the City of Petersburg.

Also, Kurt Wohlhueter mentioned that last year 700,000 pounds of fish went to Wrangell because we didn’t have the capacity here in Petersburg. “That’s about $100,000 in raw fish tax, we are watching fish go right past our front door here,” said Wohlhueter.

According to Phillips the new cold storage facility is going to be a 6,500 square foot building with a footprint of 5,500 square feet. The building will house a blast freezer and be able to hold about 1.9 million pounds of fish per year.

Wohlhueter did want to clear up one misconception. “The cold storage is not what is going to make the money for this project, it’s the freezing. The freezing is supposed to be how this project is going to make money, not on cold storage.”