Engineering firm meets Saxon Harbor stakeholders

By RICHARD JENKINS

[email protected]

Hurley — Stakeholders from various groups interested in the rebuilding of Saxon Harbor met Thursday with engineers involved in the harbor’s design process to discuss what they would like to see included in the new harbor.

“(These sessions are) about gathering information … so we understand what the community wants before we put pencil to paper. That’s critical to our design process,” Jason Stangland, with the firm Smithgroup JJR, told the Daily Globe after one of the sessions.

The meetings were broken down into businesses, non-motorized users, campers, boaters and town of Saxon representatives; with the hope of getting as complete a picture as possible into the community’s needs and wants in the harbor after it is rebuilt in the wake of flooding that destroyed in the harbor in July.

“I feel it was a great series of discussions to learn about what the stakeholders are interested in seeing happen out there. It was educational, informational and gave us a good idea about what should and could be done out there,” Stangland said.

In the meeting with several of the harbor’s long-time campers, Stangland began by discussing some of the plans being explored both with the campground and marina — with the group’s consensus being dredging and re-opening the marina should be the number one priority at the harbor.

The group also discussed a variety of issues, including what to do with the several camping spots close to the shore on the other side of Harbor Drive from the old campground.

It is unclear whether these sites could be used for camping or whether they fall in a flood plain, which would then prevent future camping there under the same state law requiring advanced warning to any campgrounds in a flood plain that is requiring the relocation of the harbor’s main campground.

The group agreed there was some conflict between those camping there and people who wanted to use the areas for activities such as volleyball or accessing the beach, and several possible solutions were discussed — including splitting the space between the two uses and creating a day-use area with volleyball nets and other activities on the site of the old campground.

The camping group also discussed the importance of the relationship between the marina users and campers, with the group saying boat owners wanted to be close to the marina for easy access and the distance between the harbor and the relocated campground possibly impeding the ability to fully enjoy the site.

The relationship between the marina and campground was a key takeaway from the day, Stangland said, and highlights a potential difficulty in designing the rebuilt harbor.

“There’s a pretty diverse set of user-groups out there, that have different interests,” he said.

The camping group also discussed the balance between maximizing the spaces in the campground with the need to have enough room at each site to camp without encroaching on neighboring sites.

In addition to the necessities, the group also discussed wishes they had for the new campground, including water hookups at each site, drive-through sites for easy access in and out and some form of secondary pavilion at the campground to compliment the existing pavilion at the former campground.

Overall, Stangland said the discussions were a good way to help fine-tune the designs.

“I would say the big ideas that were concerns we heard before and were aware of. There were smaller subtleties about how the campground was used, or details about the specific (marina design), that were new pieces of information; but they’re not holistic changes to what we understood the major challenges (to be) and problems we needed resolved,” Stangland said. “Nothing earth-shattering, but lots of good information that was more specific in detail.”

Moving forward, he said they will take the information gathered in the sessions and develop a number of alternative plans and compile cost estimates to allow the county determine the road map for the rebuilding process.