Construction to get Eaglecrest Ski Area’s controversial gondola up and running is finally underway.
The ski area announced Wednesday that work has begun to develop the access road to one of the gondola’s stations on Douglas Island. That means that the mountain will be closed off to the public beyond the main lodges for the foreseeable future.
The road construction comes more than three years after the city bought the used gondola from Austria.
And now, the ski area’s future is riding on it.
In the coming years, the ski area is slated to run into a multimillion-dollar deficit. That is intentional – it’s part of a plan to repair some broken and aging infrastructure while boosting pay to employees and preparing to operate year-round. The plan to dig out of the deficit relies heavily on revenue from the gondola.
Eaglecrest General Manager Craig Cimmons said the road construction marks a major step for the ski area.
“It’s really exciting,” he said. “Like I’ve been saying all along, the summer revenue is going to change the course of Eaglecrest forever, and having these crews here working on this really solidifies that this is happening. It’s really going to be a big deal.”
Cimmons said the goal is to have the gondola up and running by the summer of 2028. This January, the ski area will celebrate 50 years of operation.
A local Alaska Native corporation, Goldbelt Incorporated, invested $10 million in the gondola in 2022 in exchange for a revenue-sharing agreement. Goldbelt announced last fall that it plans to develop a cruise ship port a few miles north of Eaglecrest on Douglas.
Cimmons said the ski area will provide updates regularly about the status of the closure.
