Last year the Haines Borough contracted engineering firm ProHNS to design a trail along Portage Cove. Chilkoot Indian Association has agreed to carry out the construction of the trail once the design is completed.
Now the Alaska Arts Confluence wants to bring an urban design firm from New York to help with the project.
Haines Borough Public Facilities Director Brad Ryan says that ProHNS is working on a design for three sections of trail along Portage Cove. One small trail will connect Picture Point to Front Street. The second section of trail will connect the small boat harbor to the cruise ship dock. The third section will run from the cruise ship parking lot to the Portage Cove campground.
Ryan says it will be an ADA-accessible gravel path.
“My idea and what ProHNS has been directed to do is design a trail similar to the look that CIA is building across from the school. So it’ll be a hardened gravel pathway.”
Ryan imagines that the design will be completed by the summer and Chilkoot Indian Association would begin construction shortly thereafter using federal highway project funds.
Recently, Alaska Arts Confluence Director Carol Tuynman has been trying to incorporate James Corner Field Operations into the plans for Portage Cove. The famous urban design firm led the construction of the High Line greenway in New York City.
Tuynman says the firm could help the community plan for different uses of the trail.
“There’s a plan that, ‘Oh, this area would be really great for having these kinds of activities. This might be a playground area.’ Could be anything really. Field Operations will talk with the property owners, people who have commercial properties, talk with the borough. [They will] see how people want things to function and with that make a plan that serves everyone,” Tuynman says.
According to Tuynman, the Arts Confluence will pay the firm using an $86,000 design grant that the Arts Confluence received from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2017.
“We, with the borough, would be the client. The Arts Confluence through the National Endowment for the Arts grant is paying for this contract. But it would be a collaboration that includes Chilkoot Indian Association, the borough, the Arts Confluence,” Tuynman says.
Ryan says he has been in touch with James Corner Field Operations. He imagines their work would build off of the designs made by ProHNS.
“And they’re going to try to add a bigger picture of how there might be amenities to the trail: art installations, cultural interpretive signs, sensitive habitat identifications. A bigger picture of what goes along with the trail,” Ryan says.
At this point, the construction plans for the trail and the work by the urban design firm are separate. Ryan says that implementing any plans by James Corner Field Operations would occur at a later time.
“James Corner isn’t going to take this all the way to completion design, it’ll be more of a conceptual is my understanding. It’d have to be followed up on, either design-build or full design. That would have to be a completely separate aspect of the project from now,” Ryan says.
At a meeting in January, the Haines Borough Planning Commission voted to recommend that the assembly approve engagement with the architecture firm.
