Tongue Point shipyard falls short of promise, faces lawsuits

Published 1:57 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Hyak under fire, charged with rates too high, just two boats lifted

ASTORIA, Ore. — When the tug and barge building company, Hyak Tongue Point, proposed an ambitious plan to develop a shipyard on long under-utilized industrial land east of Astoria, the North Coast was sold on the idea.

With the closures of other small and medium-sized boatyards in the region, Hyak’s shipyard at North Tongue Point was poised to fill an important gap. A key component would be a massive travel lift, the largest all-electric mobile travel hoist in the nation at that time, capable of lifting everything from commercial fishing boats to barges from the Columbia River.

Local leaders saw economic potential, a proposal that could strengthen and expand the regional maritime industry and a motivated landowner finally looking to do something with important industrial waterfront property. Vessel owners and operators saw a solution to shrinking options for boat repair work and inspections. Companies who would partner with Hyak to develop the shipyard and become anchor tenants at the site saw opportunities to expand their businesses.

The state of Oregon and governments in Clatsop County were convinced, too. Hyak’s boat lift project would end up landing around $21 million in state funding as well as a 15-year break on local property taxes.

In selling the idea to Oregon’s North Coast communities, Robert Dorn, a former co-owner of Hyak Tongue Point, predicted as many as 50 boats could be lifted, inspected and repaired within the first year of the lift being operational. He estimated that 100 new jobs would be created.

Now lawsuits brought by Hyak’s key tenants and partners in the shipyard project allege something very different has occurred.

In a complaint initially filed with the Clatsop County Circuit Court last year, WCT Marine & Construction claims the travel lift has only lifted two vessels since swinging into operation over a year ago: a barge named Beluga and a private yacht belonging to Hyak’s owner, Gordon Smith.

WCT also alleges that Hyak has broken contracts and agreements with WCT and is now charging such high rates that the lift and related shipyard services at North Tongue Point are not competitive with regional shipyards and out of reach for local boat owners.

WCT also alleges retaliation by Hyak, citing what it characterizes as unwarranted scrutiny of WCT’s operations, false invoices and more.

The company claims Hyak has interfered with WCT’s ability to use the property it is leasing from Hyak, claiming, “Hyak’s conduct is an anti-competitive attempt to drive WCT’s shipyard operations out of Tongue Point.”

WCT also alleges that concerns expressed about the condition of the lift have not been addressed.

Hyak, WCT claims in its lawsuit, is “not promoting what should be a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship intended to fulfill express commitments made to local and state authorities under grant and tax incentive agreements involving more than $21M in state funds.”

Another tenant, Bergerson Construction, has also filed against Hyak over alleged nonpayment of nearly $700,000 related to the construction of two piers and an upland asphalt deck at the shipyard.

As of March 10, that complaint for foreclosure of a construction lien was scheduled for a status check hearing in June at the Clatsop County Circuit Court. Bergerson and Hyak are also going through an arbitration process with the Arbitration Service of Portland.

Hyak had claimed the work by Bergerson was incomplete. Bergerson refuted this, noting that Hyak told the state the work was finished and the company received a final disbursement of state grant funds as a result.

In court filings responding to WCT’s complaint, Hyak has denied the substance and many details of the allegations, saying that “Hyak has honored all of its obligations under all referenced agreements.”

Hyak’s attorneys also pushed back on WCT’s claims about the condition of the lift, writing that the lift “was safe to operate at all relevant times…”

Hyak acknowledged alarms sounded when the barge Beluga was being lifted, but that “they were promptly cleared and did not prevent the successful operation of the lift.”

WCT representatives told KMUN they are not using the travel lift at all now. Instead, WCT is using a trailer to bring in boats for repairs and inspections. It is a more time and labor-intensive approach that requires a high tide and limits the size of the vessels that can be hauled out of the water.

Hyak representatives would not say if there is any current use of the lift by Hyak or others associated with Hyak.

John Hie, executive vice president of Hyak Maritime, declined to discuss the lawsuits with KMUN, saying those matters would run their course.

“The only thing I’ll say about the lawsuits is we did not bring the lawsuits and we’re not interested in pursuing lawsuits with people,” Hie said. “Any disagreements that are out there certainly have two sides to the argument.”

He said it is still Hyak’s goal to develop the shipyard facility.

Meanwhile, WCT owner Willie Toristoja said they plan to take the matter as far as they can —“until a judge or a jury makes a decision.”

“I think it’s really unfortunate and disappointing that it’s come to this, but at the same time we can’t be bullied,” he told KMUN. “We’re just trying to stand up for what this yard was built upon and the vision that Bob Dorn had for the yard and the promises made to the community and the marine community for the travel lift.”

Greg Morrill, owner of Bergerson Construction, isn’t sure how the shipyard and the business partnerships that aided its development move forward now.

“I would love for things to move forward in an atmosphere of partnering,” he said. “But I fear those opportunities are gone given the situation and just how things have devolved into legal disputes. It’s really tough to recover from that.”

But, like WCT, Bergerson felt it was important to file a lawsuit.

“We do a lot of work all around the region and we pride ourselves on doing what we say we’re going to do, doing what we’re contracted to do,” Morrill said. “And we expect to get paid when we’re done with the project. I don’t know why we can’t expect the same on this, especially with public money involved.”

For locals invested in the shipyard’s success but on the outside of the business partnerships, the situation is bewildering.

Kevin Leahy, executive director of Clatsop Economic Development Resources, worked with Hyak and WCT early on in the shipyard’s development.

He was present at meetings where Dorn pitched the idea of the shipyard and asked leaders for their support. He helped facilitate local and state requests and was a vocal champion of the project.

“There’s got to be a solution and I don’t know what it is,” he told KMUN.

“I’m just looking at … how much time we’ve all spent, like our team, the county, Business Oregon, all the partners in this initiative — and now having it kind of, let’s say, stuck,” he said. “How do we get it moving forward?”

‘A diamond in the rough’


Located about four miles from the heart of downtown Astoria, Tongue Point is a decommissioned Naval base. The peninsula that gives the area its name juts out into the Columbia River, a wedge of land that, indeed, looks like a tongue.

Today the area is home to several different facilities including the Tongue Point Job Corps Center and Clatsop Community College’s Marine and Environmental Research Training Station, or MERTS.

Hyak’s piece, the North Tongue Point site, sits at the end of a curving road below tree-covered hills. The site is dominated by the large hangars and buildings used by WCT and Bergerson and an expanse of tarmac terminating in piers and the river.

On a long stretch of tarmac, away from the hangars, the travel lift looms on four steel legs, each leg set with a collection of large wheels.

Unlike the trailer currently used by WCT, the lift places a sling under a vessel in the water, hoists it up and out and then wheels it to where it will be inspected or repaired. When in operation, the lift is meant to work quickly and efficiently. There are other such lifts on the Oregon Coast, but none capable of lifting vessels as large as what Hyak’s 1,500-ton lift can handle.

Before Hyak, previous visions and plans for North Tongue Point had faltered despite the site’s potential.

Beginning in 2009, the Port of Astoria leased the 30-plus acre property from Washington Real Estate Group, an investment company based in Montana. At various points, the port entered into discussions to purchase the property, but never finalized a deal.

In 2017, the port opted to end its 10-year lease two years early so the property could be sold to Hyak for $4.1 million.

Dirk Rohne was on the Port of Astoria commission when that sale happened. In 2018, he would refer to the sale during a commission meeting, calling it “a great win” for the community. He isn’t sure what to think now.

“I was very supportive and enthusiastic of the vision as Bob Dorn shared it, and the potential benefit to WCT Marine and Bergerson Construction, both of which are active economic contributors in our community,” he told KMUN.

Hyak Tongue Point is a subsidiary of Hyak Maritime, itself a subsidiary of Hyak Holdings Delaware LLC. The owner of all of this is Gordon Smith, who is also a majority owner of Hyak Motorsports, a stock car racing team with a car that competes in the NASCAR Cup Series races.

At the time that Hyak bought the North Tongue Point site, though, Robert Dorn was still a co-owner of Hyak Maritime. After the purchase and in the ramp up toward major funding requests to the state for the boat lift, Dorn was the face and voice of Hyak in Astoria.

Dorn called the North Tongue Point site a “diamond in the rough with respect to helping people maintain fleets.”

He pointed to the tighter federal regulations for boat inspections combined with shipyard closures in the Pacific Northwest. The lift Hyak wanted to bring to the North Coast would be a valuable local asset.

“We have many coastal tugs and barges, many big commercial fishing boats, but very limited options of places to go,” Dorn told The Astorian in 2021. “We’ve seen this coming over 20 years, and now it’s in crisis mode.”

When Hyak applied for nearly $14 million from the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Connect Oregon competitive grant program in 2021, Dorn collected numerous letters of support for the project from state politicians, from boat operators up and down the West Coast, from city councils and even from former state Senator Betsy Johnson.

To Hyak, public funding was critical — necessary, Dorn told The Astorian, to get the project off the ground but also to keep costs low for vessel owners.

“Without public support, I will never make a return on that,” Dorn told The Astorian, speaking about the investment in Tongue Point and the travel lift. “I would have to charge people enormous amounts of money to come in because these are expensive machines to maintain.”

Almost from the beginning, Hyak’s plans for North Tongue Point were well-received locally. But when Hyak went to the state in pursuit of public funding — for Connect Oregon funding specifically — the project encountered some resistance.

State support

Connect Oregon grant funds are intended for transportation projects: rail, aviation and marine capital infrastructure.

In April 2022, a final review committee looked at 49 applications for $46 million in available funding. Among the applications was Hyak’s boat lift. All of the projects had already gone through a vetting process, evaluated and scored on their possible economic benefits and their consistency with regional economic priorities and related concerns in Oregon.

Now the final review committee would determine who ultimately made the cut for funding.

When the Hyak travel lift, also referred to as a mobile lift, came up for consideration, several committee members raised concerns.

They worried about the overall cost of the project as compared to the Connect Oregon funding available and the fact that the company’s request of more than $13 million would “use up a substantial portion of available funding,” according to minutes of the meeting. Some smaller projects from other entities might miss out on funding this round, they noted.

Hyak planned to match the Connect Oregon grant with $7 million the company had received from the Oregon Legislature. Given that Hyak was not bringing its own match to the Connect Oregon grant, some committee members said they were concerned that the project “would essentially be fully built from state funds.”

Committee members in favor of the lift project, though, echoed what other supporters had said.

They pointed to the possible number of direct and indirect jobs associated with the project and the need for the project “in how it would be the only facility in Oregon with this capacity and reduction in travel for boats needing repair.”

The Hyak project was ultimately ranked at number 16 out of 21 projects selected for funding.

Ranked at number 30 that year — and off the list for funding — was a request from the Port of Astoria for $7 million to rebuild the partially collapsed causeway at one of the port’s longstanding headaches, the East Mooring Basin. In 2024, that causeway would be removed entirely.

To receive the Connect Oregon money, Hyak entered into an agreement with the state that outlined how the money was to be used and the manner in which the project was supposed to proceed.

The agreement stated that funds might need to be returned to the state if the provisions in the agreement were not followed or if there were unspent funds or if the grant were terminated — standard language for Connect Oregon grant agreements and the closest thing to a clawback provision for the $13.9 million award to Hyak, according to a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

According to monthly reports Hyak submitted to the state, the boat lift components were shipped to Seattle beginning in February 2024 and arrived at North Tongue Point by early June 2024. The lift was assembled over that summer with commissioning and testing set for the fall.

A report to the state in September 2024, signed by Dorn, noted that the travel lift was up and running and had lifted a Tidewater Barges Line barge.

Early last January, a liaison with the Oregon Department of Transportation visited North Tongue Point. The liaison was given a tour of the work accomplished with the Connect Oregon funding and tasked with verifying that the work and infrastructure funded by the grant had been done.

The liaison saw the travel lift and other components and signed off on the inspection.

A second evaluation, referred to as the final report, is due to the state from Hyak by July 7 of this year.

In that report, Hyak will need to identify the number of jobs the company created or retained during the construction of the lift facility and after it was completed, among other details.

Local support

Besides the Connect Oregon money, Hyak’s travel lift project also benefited from a Clatsop Enterprise Zone abatement, giving the area a 15-year break on property taxes on redeveloped land WCT leased from Hyak — around $5.5 million in tax abatement, according to information available at the time the agreement was made.

WCT was the party named in the abatement agreement along with the sponsors of the Clatsop Enterprise Zone. These included Clatsop County, the cities of Astoria and Warrenton and the Port of Astoria.

In return for the tax breaks, WCT committed to a minimum investment in the facility — the $21 million toward the travel lift counted there.

At the time of the abatement agreement, WCT employed around 22 employees annually. Under the agreement, the company committed to hiring 50 additional employees and, after that, maintaining up to at least 72 full-time employees during the tax exemption period. After the facility was placed into service, WCT would have three years to accomplish the hires.

WCT also agreed to pay these employees high wages — equal or greater than 130% of the Clatsop County average annual wage.

At the Oct. 26, 2022 meeting where the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners unanimously signed off on the agreement, Commissioner Lianne Thompson thanked Dorn, who was in the audience, and Commissioner Pamela Wev called the shipyard project “the most exciting, to my mind, economic development area of Clatsop County right now.”

But in a document signed July 1, 2025, WCT transferred that abatement agreement over to Hyak along with the obligations to grow jobs and provide high wages.

WCT filed its lawsuit against Hyak in the Clatsop County Circuit Court several months later.

Hie confirmed that Dorn is no longer associated with Hyak. KMUN’s calls to Dorn for comment on this story were not returned. KMUN also reached out to Betsy Johnson, who declined to be interviewed.

Representatives with Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency, were also key advocates and facilitators for the project. In 2018, the agency helped Hyak secure a $350,000 grant from the Governor’s Strategic Reserve Fund to rehabilitate a seaplane ramp at North Tongue Point and increase its load capacity.

In 2023, Dorn wrote a letter of support on behalf of Business Oregon’s budget request to the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee and referenced the 2018 grant. He noted that Hyak was required under that grant to invest $5 million into the businesses at Tongue Point within the next five years. Hyak ended up investing $8.2 million by the end of year four, he said.

Dorn took the opportunity to emphasize the importance of Hyak’s North Tongue Point facility to generate new jobs in the maritime industry and the support the shipyard would provide for the “critically important Columbia River towboat and barge fleet.”

Business Oregon representatives declined to be interviewed for this article.

In an email, a spokesperson wrote, “Our only comment would be that we would love to see Tongue Point rise to its potential as a tremendous asset to the region and the economic driver that was first envisioned by Hyak and its partners.”

‘That is the best area’

On a sunny day in February, WCT had several vessels staged for repairs at North Tongue Point. Tugs owned by Toristoja rested along a pier.

Farther down was a 110-foot vessel, Western Dawn, used in the Pacific whiting fishery. It was in need of the routine inspection and repair work that people in the industry refer to as “a cut and shave,” but was too large to be hauled out by WCT’s trailer.

Owner Burt Parker later received a quote from Hyak for the work and the use of the travel lift. It was nearly four times more than what he had expected to pay.

Now, he has an appointment with a shipyard in Seattle. Even accounting for additional fuel and crew costs to get Western Dawn there, Parker expects he’ll pay less than what Hyak would have charged.

Parker has boats based out of Washington state and Alaska and several, like Western Dawn, out of Astoria.

He grew up on boats. He started fishing with his father as a child and bought his own boat as a young adult. He’s seen the industry change and the path to entry become increasingly difficult for the next generation of fishermen.

Several years ago, he bought a boat in San Diego and stopped along ports all the way up the coast. In his opinion, Astoria was one of the worst places to bring a boat and still is.

One reason Western Dawn was sitting at North Tongue Point was because there was nowhere with the Port of Astoria where it could be tied up and the Warrenton marina was full, Parker said.

For the vessel operators and owners who were looking forward to the shipyard facilities Hyak had planned, the current situation at North Tongue Point is part of a larger issue when it comes to maritime infrastructure and support in the lower Columbia River region and the Astoria area in particular.

Ila Hodges co-owns a 75-foot vessel used for bottom fishing in the Astoria area. WCT recently hauled the boat out for work using the trailer, not the travel lift. For Hodges, the additional time it takes to set up the trailer and wait for a high enough tide to bring the boat out of the water is time that could be spent fishing.

Hodges first became aware of Hyak’s plans for North Tongue Point when the company was pursuing the Connect Oregon money. The Port of Astoria was also in the running for grant funding through the program, for work on a site that, at the time, was much more relevant to Hodges: the East Mooring Basin in Astoria.

This basin used to be home to a variety of vessels including large commercial fishing boats, but key components — like a causeway that once provided vehicle access to the dock areas – deteriorated and fell into significant disrepair. The docks themselves became overrun by sea lions.

Hodges and her partners went from being able to drive along the causeway to load and unload their vessel to, when the causeway was closed because of safety concerns, relying on a skiff to ferry crew from the land to the boat.

Then, someone stole the skiff.

Hodges and her partners eventually moved their vessel to Warrenton.

Hodges wonders now what would have happened if Hyak hadn’t been given the $13.9 million from Connect Oregon, if the port’s request would have had a chance at some of the money instead.

Ranked at number 30 and below other multi-million dollar requests including a $22 million request from Columbia Export Terminal, it isn’t clear that the port’s causeway rebuild project would have risen above the cut line even if Hyak’s travel lift was out of the running.

Regardless, Hodges would like to see vitality across Astoria’s maritime infrastructure, and especially at North Tongue Point.

“That is the best area,” she said. “Tongue Point is one of the best areas you’ve got around and it could handle lots of work if it was properly used.”

Beyond the lawsuits, Hyak representatives have indicated that dredging could be an issue at North Tongue Point.

The need to dredge was not positioned publicly as a central concern when Dorn and WCT were developing plans for the shipyard, but Hie told KMUN that Hyak has been pursuing dredging permits for several years.

That process has not moved forward, he said, and there are challenges with where dredged materials would be placed. Without dredging, though, he added, there is a limit on the draft of the vessels that can ultimately come into the area.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told KMUN required maintenance dredging of the nearby federal navigation channel took place in 2023. Dredging also occurred around that time for the U.S. Coast Guard’s fast response cutter homeport at Pier 6 on Tongue Point.

A spokesperson for the Corps told KMUN Hyak has been talking with the agency about the permitting process for dredging the North Tongue Point site but has not yet submitted the application that would begin the regulatory approval process.

KMUN is The Astorian’s media partner.