Cordova City Center Expected to Open in Summer 2013

CORDOVA, Alaska — Residents in Cordova will soon have an impressive place to gather for meetings and city events with its new city center.

The building will house city offices, a museum, the library, and it will also have space for performances in its location along 1st Street in downtown Cordova.

The city has planned the center for more than a decade, but it was only in the past few years that the city was able to come up with the money.

“This stems out of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the city of Cordova was very negatively affected by that and this is a goal to sort of help the community rebuild part of that economic base that we lost in that oil spill,” Cordova City Manager, Mark Lynch said.

Construction has been delayed slightly, because of this winter's record amount of snow, but planners say they expect it will open at the end of next summer.

“I think all construction projects have their little glitches and we're a little bit behind schedule but part of that was the snow we had this winter construction delays due to a number of different things,” Lynch said.

The Cordova center replaces multiple, aging buildings, which the city says are not very energy efficient.