The Petersburg Borough Assembly approved an updated version of a five-year lease on March 16, allowing for certain small-scale seafood processing at the town’s Community Cold Storage facility.
The Petersburg Economic Development Council is a nonprofit that rents the property from the Borough for $1.00 a year, and has done so for two decades. But the facility’s main, anchor tenant is Coastal Cold Storage — a local, small-scale processor. An anchor tenant provides reliable income that keeps the facility’s doors open for the general public to use it.
Harbormaster Glorianne Wollen is on the development council’s board. Testifying at an assembly meeting on Monday, she said the move to update the lease and allow this previously prohibited use accommodates the facility’s anchor tenant.
“We need to address it into the lease, that that’s an allowable item,” Wollen told the Assembly. “Otherwise, you know, I’m going to be before you, giving you the bad news that we got to shut that place down. It just would not function unless we have somebody like Coastal Cold Storage in there.”
The Assembly unanimously approved the resolution with a 6–0 vote, extending the lease for another five years and changing its language to expand what uses are allowed on the property premises. Assembly member Scott Newman was excused from the meeting.
The Assembly on Monday also approved a one-year extension of the Borough’s contract with Republic Services, which removes the municipality’s garbage from Mitkof Island.
The one-year contract is valued between $510,000 and $550,000, or about $207.20 per ton of waste. In a memo to the Assembly, Public Works Director Aaron Marohl recommended extending the contract because finding a cheaper option was unlikely at this point.
The agreement will now last through the end of August 2027. By then, the Borough could have a better idea of what possible alternatives exist for managing solid waste, as the Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority expects to wrap up its large-scale regional study on the issue later this year.
