Skagway looking to boost port activity

Photo by Vince Fedoroff

Skagway Mayor Tom Cochran wants to expand port services in his coastal borough and visited Whitehorse on Wednesday to sell the idea.

“We’ve had a pretty vibrant tourist economy for many years, and it’s our only economy, per se,“ he said during a late afternoon reception at the Westmark Whitehorse Hotel.

“It attracts a pretty large workforce but it doesn’t really attract families, so anything we can do to diversify our economy and get quality, year-round jobs in our community is of the utmost importance to us.“

Currently, the volume of tourists - most of whom arrive on cruise ships during the summer - outweighs the 40,000 tonnes of raw materials that are shipped out of Skagway each year.

At its peak, Skagway’s port loaded up to 600,000 tonnes of material annually. However, as the price of copper bottomed out in the mid-1990s, use of the facility also tapered off.

Joined by a team of consultants, Cochran told guests that Skagway wants to get a sense of how to accommodate the Yukon’s business needs before renovating and expanding the port.

“There’s really no construction until we have a strong business case,“ Cochran told the Star, adding that existing infrastructure with some improvements could easily handle two or three times the current volume.

“It’s all trigger points; if enough comes on line and we have the demand, we’ll look at what the next phase would be to enhance the port facility.“

Yukon Economic Development Minister Jim Kenyon, whose department has two seats on the Skagway Port Development Steering Committee, said having viable ports such as Skagway is key for the territory’s mining industry.

“Getting the resources out of the ground is only the beginning,“ he said.

“Mines rely on having access to cost-efficient transportation options to get the resources from the mine site to markets.“

The current development study is expected to take two months to complete.

Any financing for Skagway’s port enhancement and/or expansion is expected to come in the form of a public-private-partnership.

The Yukon made the most use of Skagway’s port when lead and zinc concentrates from the now-closed Faro mine were taken by train, and later by truck, from Whitehorse to the port from 1969 to 1998.

That period included several lengthy mine closures due to falling commodity prices and strikes, before it was permanently closed a decade ago.

White Pass and Yukon Route train service between Whitehorse and Skagway was discontinued in 1982, after the mine began a four-year period of dormancy.