Business Community Government
City expects to complete Homeport project by year’s end
The city of Gig Harbor’s long-anticipated Commercial Fishing Homeport has moved a step closer to reality.
The city announced on Jan. 22 it will seek contractor bids this spring, followed by prefabrication work — offsite material assembly — in the summer. The city said in its announcement that it plans to complete work by the end of the year.
“The indications are that the ducks are lining up,” said Guy Hoppen, a local fisherman who has long advocated for the dock’s construction. He said Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm looped in fishermen invested in the project and that “it all looks good.”
“It’s so far along that it would be beyond imagination that it could be derailed … when the first boat’s tied up, we’ll breathe a sigh of relief,” Hoppen said.
Ancich Park as seen from the eastern shore of Gig Harbor. City plans call for the Commercial Fishing Homeport on the right of this image.
Project planned for 13 years
The city first proposed building the Homeport 13 years ago. In that time, the project has faced several delays, primarily due to complicated federal permitting processes.
The homeport represents a piece of the city’s Croatian-American fishing heritage, providing a public dock for commercial fishing vessels. It is also an opportunity for cultural tourism and economic growth. The dock at Ancich Waterfront Park will accommodate 17 commercial fishing boats, each between 60 and 70 feet long.
The project’s total budget is $3,480,000, funded through a variety of methods listed on the city’s website. These include a $200,000 donation from the Gig Harbor Commercial Fishermen’s Club and a $200,000 grant from the Port of Tacoma. The city’s Hospital Benefit Zone tax ($300,000) and Real Estate Excise Tax ($2.5 million) provide public funding.
Most of the work on the new dock will be in the water, Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm said in an email. Any impact to roadways, such as closures, “will generally include material deliveries and parking for the contractor’s crew.”
Mitigation plan
In its Homeport website update page, the city said that the Army Corps of Engineers accepted an updated mitigation plan, which “includes installing energy dissipation at the Soundview Drive stormwater outfall, removal of the Jerkovich Pier, and payment of mitigation credits to the Puget Sound Partnership.”
The “energy dissipation” the city cited on its update page, Langhelm explained, “means making modifications to the stormwater outfall to further slow the velocity of the water so as to reduce impacts to the beach. All project mitigation is considered a part of the overall project permit. No further city permits are required.”
The city said that mitigation credits are the same thing as Conservation Credits, which are a method of offsetting environmental impacts of construction by financially supporting another environmental restoration project.
Ancich Park in Gig Harbor.
When Gig Harbor Now wrote about delays to Homeport’s construction in July 2025, the city provided the mitigation plan. It showed the city would have to buy 503 Conservation Credits to offset the Homeport project.
However, when we asked this week for the updated mitigation plan to add more details to this story, the city told us to file a formal public records request. Public records requests can take weeks or months to fulfill.
When we asked why the city this year required a records request for the document, when it had provided it to us for last year’s story without one, the city responded that it would present the updated plan at a hearing examiner meeting as part of the planning process. The city told us to keep an eye on the city’s planning calendar for those details, and estimated the hearing examiner meeting would take place sometime in the spring.