This is the draft design for the Heritage Harbor Mariner’s Memorial. (Corvus Design)
Wrangell officials have OK’d updated plans for a Mariner’s Memorial at Heritage Harbor.
Chris Mertl of Juneau-based Corvus Design presented the plans at this month’s Port Commission meeting. They were based on one of three presented at an earlier meeting, with modifications requested by the commission.
Chairman Brennan Eagle says Mertl will now move on to the next phase of design.
“It would be having him put together the construction documents so we can go out to bid. We haven’t identified the funding yet. But we feel we need to do that step so when we go to request funding, we’ll have a real organized plan to go forward and a pretty hard figure on what it’s going to cost to build this,” he says.
Eagle expects to get the cost estimate within the next two months.
He says the design has evolved over a number of meetings.
“The main element of the memorial … would be the 24-foot, eight-sided pavilion that would be out at the end of the area near Heritage Harbor,” he says. “And then there would be three or four inside, curving steel walls, and that’s where the story of the different timeframes in Wrangell would be told.”
The memorial will include a place to post names of Wrangell mariners. Eagle says it’s not yet decided how that will work.
The next Port Commission meeting is scheduled for June 5th.
Juneau, Sitka and Petersburg are among other Alaska cities with similar memorials.
