TRUCK FIRE – Firefighters knock down a fire in a Ford Explorer truck in Arrowhead Trailer Park in the 1200 block of Sawmill Creek Road Saturday evening. One person received fire-related injuries and was taken to the hospital, Sitka Fire Department Chief Craig Warren said, and the truck was considered a total loss. The cause of the fire is under investigation, Warren said. The fire hall received the call about the fire at 5:33 p.m., and one fire engine with eight firefighters and an ambulance were dispatched, he said. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
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Daily Sitka Sentinel
Bad Luck Hampers Industrial Park Pig Farm
By BRIELLE SCHAEFFER
Sentinel Staff Writer
Under the business plan for her startup enterprise, Sawmill Farm, Bobbi Daniels had planned to be butchering pigs by last July and selling pork to local buyers.
She has been running the farm on a seven-acre tract of land she leases from the city at Gary Paxton Industrial Park.
The Sawmill Cove Farm is pictured today. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
Her plan calls for the pigs to be fattened up on out-of-date food discarded by grocery stores and other businesses.
But, as she told the Gary Paxton Industrial Park Board at the board’s regular meeting last week, she is behind in her business plan as well as in lease obligations to the city.
“If somebody had told me a day after I had got this lease last year what would have happened this year I would have walked in a heartbeat,” she tearfully told the board. “It was apocalyptic.”
She bought several pigs in Washington state, to be shipped to Sitka by ferry, but that didn‘t work out.
“I never got my pigs and I never got my money back,” she said.
Family health problems further complicated matters. Last fall, she got four pigs, that are now pregnant, but she’s still playing catch up in finances.
“We’re a year behind where we thought we were going to be,” she said.
While Daniels is current on her $250 per month lease payments, she hasn’t secured the required $50,000 bond to protect the city from any cleanup costs.
That worries GPIP Board members. They also have gotten complaints from local residents and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation that the site is strewn with garbage.
“You know what gives us anxiety is you’re not performing out there and it looks like a mess,” board member Charles Horan said.
New board member Sheila Finkenbinder said Daniels needs to get her property – and insurance – in order.
“I love your energy and I love what you are trying to do, but you are on the industrial park’s property and we have these things you have to comply with,” Finkenbinder said.
Board members discussed possibly amending the lease to decrease the bond requirement for a few months, which would lower payments for Daniels.
The board gave Daniels another month to clean up the property and settle bond and insurance issues before deciding whether to cancel the lease.
“There’s a huge portion of me that wished nothing worked out,” Daniels said. But “am I going to walk away from this after all of this now?”
Bottled water
Blue Lake water sales also were on the board’s meeting agenda Thursday.
The GPIP is still percolating an offer from a company called Eckart Sales and Marketing to purchase Blue Lake water in bulk for bottling out of state.
The company proposed a deal giving it exclusive rights to Blue Lake water, with a plan of increasing shipments to an eventual 500,000 gallons per year at one cent per gallon.
The GPIP board counter-offered one-cent per gallon plus 6 percent of Eckart’s gross sales for exclusivity, but the company declined. Its counter offer was one-half percent of gross sales, which would mean $356 for 10,200 gallons and $17,832 for 510,000 gallons on top of the one cent per gallon purchasing cost.
“We hope that half a percent ends up being hundreds of thousands of dollars for you guys but we got to get there,” Michael Eckart said.
Board member Hugh Bevan shot that down.
“If the water is only worth half a percent it seems like water would be worth more where you can bottle it and you wouldn’t have to mess around with barges,” he said.
Board members discussed the possibility of an up-front fee plus exclusivity for North American markets after the company buys 500,000 gallons.
GPIP Director Garry White said he’ll work on a proposal for the board and Eckarts to look over at an upcoming meeting.
Other business
The GPIP Board also:
– unanimously approved a lease of the 34,636-square-foot lot 9-C in the park to Silver Bay Seafoods for the summer.
–discussed allowing a new lease with Pat Glaab of Northline Seafoods to allow him to grade the shoreline for a potential boat ramp but will take it up later.
– recommended that the Sitka Assembly accept an insurance settlement of roughly $248,000 for the landslide damage to the GPIP administration building. They also considered creating a request for proposal for sale of the building.
Login Form
20 YEARS AGO
March 2004
Businesses using the Centennial Hall parking lot testified Tuesday against a proposal to charge them rent in addition to the $200 annual permit fee. City Administrator Hugh Bevan made the proposal in response to the Assembly’s direction to Centennial Hall manager Don Kluting to try to close the $340,000 gap between building revenues and operational costs.
50 YEARS AGO
March 1974
Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand President William S. Paul Sr. will be special guest and speaker at the local ANB, Alaska Native Sisterhood Founders Day program Monday at the ANB Hall.