On the Waterfront
L'Anse secures $700K grant
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L'ANSE -- The Village of L'Anse has been awarded a $700,000 federal grant to reconstruct and expand its commercial waterfront, a project the village manager said will establish a major regional maritime shipping hub.
The structural funding is to rehabilitate the K-Port Facility on Keweenaw Bay. Historically, the site was divided into different lettered zones and docks for inventory handling when the former Celotex Corporation operated their ceiling tile plant on Henry Ford's old 1922 sawmill location.
"It's in really rough shape and it needs to be reconstructed," said L'Anse Village Manager Bob LaFave. "We used it briefly a few years ago - actually probably 10 years ago now - when they brought the RICE units in."
The location’s deep-water industrial capacity traces back to the regional lumber and iron-shipping booms of the late 19th century, with major commercial docks established at the site in the 1870s by operators including the Marshall Butters Lumber Company.
Ford Motor Company subsequently acquired and retrofitted the preexisting waterfront facilities when it purchased the local sawmill complex in 1922, using the wharves for company freighters to transport timber across the Great Lakes during the 1920s and 1930s. Following Ford’s departure in 1942, the site was used by the Celotex Corporation.
"That facility, I think, was originally built when the Ford Motor Company had its facility here in the 40s and 50s," LaFave noted. "That's the K and Port Facility. We've been working with Quincy Materials and CertainTeed on getting the port rebuilt."
Quincy Materials Corporation is an advanced materials processing company that recovers mission critical metals, minerals and materials from legacy mining operations. The corporation, says the company website, transforms feedstocks into high value materials for US manufacturing and infrastructure.
"Quincy Materials is interested in building a facility here and is working with us and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on a project to make manufactured product from the stamp sand issue that's in the area here," LaFave said, "but we also think this port facility can offer many more uses. We have rail available here in L'Anse."
LaFave said the port upgrades will enable the Houghton-based Quincy Materials Corporation, working with building materials manufacturer CertainTeed, to construct a massive regional resource recovery project. The companies plan to build a processing facility at the site to convert 1.5 million to 2 million tons of copper stamp sands per year into manufactured commercial products, including copper concentrate and supplementary cementitious materials.
" I think it will be a really nice facility for the whole region moving forward," LaFave said.
The project targets the stamp sands migrating toward Keweenaw County’s Buffalo Reef, an aquatic nursery that accounts for approximately one-third of the commercial and subsistence lake trout and whitefish yield in southern Lake Superior.
"Obviously there are opportunities for multi-modal shipping that could happen as well," he said. "We have rail available here in L'Anse. Obviously there are opportunities for multi-modal shipping that could happen as well."
LaFave said the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) is directly integrated into the logistics and safety protocols of the infrastructure deployment.
"The KBIC is a partner on the grant application that we have here, they're going to be doing the environmental monitoring on this," LaFave stated. "Hopefully this all works out, but I think if it does, it's potentially a big win-win for everybody. It helps mitigate the stamp sand issue, it creates opportunities for some jobs, and of course then, to the infrastructure being built. I think it will be a really nice facility for the whole region moving forward. I think there's a lot of win out there for everybody in this."