Skanska has signed the contract to replace Pier 1 at Naval Station Newport, the Swedish construction company announced Friday, putting a builder behind the $271 million project Rhode Island’s congressional delegation announced last month.
The contract is with Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Mid-Atlantic. Skanska said it will book the work in its third-quarter U.S. order bookings.
The company’s announcement also identifies what will tie up at the pier: four Coast Guard Offshore Patrol Cutters. Sen. Jack Reed’s office said in September that the pier would hold four major cutters but that the specific ships would be announced later. The Offshore Patrol Cutter is the Coast Guard’s newest class of major cutter, designed to replace its aging medium endurance fleet.
The existing pier at Coddington Cove, built in the mid-1950s, measured roughly 100 by 1,580 feet and was condemned after decades of storm damage. It has already been demolished. The replacement will run about 80 by 1,000 feet, with a higher deck elevation intended to reduce wave damage and account for sea level rise.
Beyond the pier itself, the project includes new electrical substations, water and wastewater connections, a compressed air system, new bulkhead, dredging, site improvements and underground utilities.
Five Coast Guard cutters are currently homeported at the station: the buoy tenders Oak and Sycamore and the medium endurance cutters Legare, Campbell and Tahoma. Construction and cutter deliveries are scheduled to run through 2030.
The pier is one of two federal projects reshaping the Coddington Cove waterfront. NOAA is completing a $147 million Marine Operations Center-Atlantic on a five-acre site there, relocated from Norfolk, Virginia, which will homeport four research vessels.
